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002 272 435 6 



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, and Mental Disease Monograph Series No. 23 



The Significance of Psychoanalysis 
for the Mental Sciences 



By 
Dr. OTTO RANK 

AND 

Dr. HANNS SACHS 

of Vienna 



Authorized English Translation by 
DR. CHARLES R. PAYNE 



New York 

Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company 

1916 



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Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series No. 23 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOAN- 
ALYSIS FOR THE MENTAL 
SCIENCES 



BY 

DR. OTTO RANK 

AND 

DR. HANNS SACHS 

OF VIENNA 



AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY 

DR. CHARLES R. PAYNE 



NEW YORK 

THE NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE 

PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1916 






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Copyright, 1916, by 
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PRESS OF 

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PREFACE 

In the following pages, which take up the applicability and 
significance of psychoanalysis for the mental sciences, the subject 
can be treated in only the briefest form : neither its evolution nor 
the extensive body of facts on which its conclusive force rests, 
can be considered. The degree, however, in which the particular 
mental sciences are treated by us bears no relation whatever to 
the cultural importance of these but only to the number of points 
of contact with psychoanalysis which have thus far been demon- 
strated. This is determined on the one hand by the share which 
the unconscious has in the mental products of humanity, on the 
other hand, by the comparative youth of our science and further 
by external and accidental influences. 

Thus, our attention was directed principally to the outlook 
for the future in which the question of method which will be 
applicable to the stating and solution of the problems seemed the 
most important. In the endeavor to carry out this principal 
object, we sought to supplement our study of the individual 
problems, the elaboration of which we have striven to further 
in the magazine Imago edited by us under the direction of 
Professor Freud. 

Instead of interrupting the text by particular citations and 
references to the literature, we refer here once and for all to the 
fundamental writings of Freud (ten volumes have appeared from 
F. Deuticke in Vienna and S. Karger in Berlin) as well as to the 
compilations and periodicals edited under his direction, in which 
the articles belonging to our subject and the other psychoanalytic 
literature are to be found. 

The Authors 

Vienna, 

Easter, 1913 



" Car tous les hommes desirent d'etre heureux, cela sans exception. 
Quelques differents moyens qu'ils y emploient, ils tendent tous a ce but. 
Ce qui fait que l'un va a la guerre, et que l'autre n'y va pas, c'est ce meme 
desir qui est dans tous les deux accompagne de differentes vues. La 
volonte ne fait jamais la moindre demarche que vers cet objet. C'est le 
motif de toutes les action, de tous les hommes, jusqu'a ceux qui se tuent 
et qui se pendent." — Pascal : Pensees sur L'Homme. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



I. The Unconscious and its Forms of Expression I 

II. Investigation of Myths and Legends 27 

III. Theory of Religion 67 

IV. Ethnology and Linguistics 79 

V. Esthetics and Psychology of Artists 93 

VI. Philosophy, Ethics and Law 108 

VII. Pedagogy and Characterology 120 



CHAPTER I 
The Unconscious and its Forms of Expression 

The foundation on which the whole of psychoanalysis rests is 
the theory of the unconscious. Under this, however, is not to 
be understood a term derived from abstract thought nor merely 
an hypothesis created with the aim of establishing a philosophic 
system ; with the significance, for example, which Eduard von 
Hartmann has given the word, psychoanalysis possesses no con- 
nection at all. The negative peculiarity of the phenomenon ap- 
pearing in the term, namely, the absence of the quality of con- 
sciousness, is indeed the most essential and most characteristic 
one, but not, however, the only one. We are already familiar 
with a whole series of positive distinguishing features which 
differentiate the unconscious psychic material from the rest, the 
conscious and foreconscious. 

An idea which at a given moment belongs to the content of 
consciousness of an individual, can in the next moment have 
disappeared; others, emerging later, have appeared in its place. 
Nevertheless, the idea still retains a permanent relation to the 
conscious mental life, for it can be brought back again by some 
kind of connected association chain without the necessity of a 
new sense perception ; that is to say, in the interim, the idea was 
removed from the conscious mental life but still remained ac- 
cessible to the mental processes. Such ideas, which indeed lack 
the quality of consciousness, the latter being every time recover- 
able however, we call the foreconscious and distinguish this most 
explicitly from the real unconscious. 

The real unconscious ideas are not, like the foreconscious 
ideas, temporarily separated from the conscious mental life, but 
are permanently excluded from it ; the power to reenter con- 
sciousness, or stated more exactly, the normal waking conscious- 
ness of the subject, these ideas lack completely. As the state of 
consciousness changes, so also does its condition of receptivity. 



2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

After such transformations as are brought about, for example, 
by the condition known to neurologists as "condition seconde" 
and also by hypnosis and to a certain extent also by sleep, there 
becomes accessible to the subject a flood of psychic material, 
phantasies, memories, wishes, etc., which was until that moment 
unknown to him. That these products are occasioned by the 
change in consciousness is with some of these, for example 
memories, excluded a priori. With others, the conclusion may 
be reached from observing their effects that they must have been 
previously present in the unconscious. 

In everything which comes to view from the unconscious on 
such occasions, experience has shown the constant repetition of 
certain common characteristics. To these characteristics, belong 
in the first place a world of affect of uncommonly high intensity 
and further a persistent attempt to encroach on the conscious 
mental life; this encroachment is explained by the principle that 
every affect and the idea invested by it has a natural tendency to 
appropriate as great a part of the mental life as possible as a 
consequence of those affective forces. If to every state of con- 
sciousness, there corresponds a definite condition for the admis- 
sion or rejection of ideas, then this condition can be imposed 
and executed by nothing else than an energy acting in psychic 
affairs which excludes from consciousness the ideas which dis- 
please it or represses those ideas already there. The effect of a 
force is counteracted only by another equally strong or superior 
force opposed to it ; the psychic processes which we can observe 
are thus the results of dynamic relations which are to be inferred 
from them. We have before us the picture of a strict gate- 
/ keeper who slams the door in the faces of uninvited guests. 
Since an affect which is present exercises not a momentary but 
a lasting activity, it is also not destroyed by a single repulse. 
Rather, there must be established a perpetual frontier guard; 
that is, in other words, a permanent interaction of forces, as a 
result of which, a certain psychic tension becomes inseparable 
from our mental life. That energy, the function of which is to 
protect consciousness from the invasion of the unconscious, we 
call, according as it appears in aggressive or defensive form, 
repression or resistance. 






rp ^/:.\v< 




THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 3 

We have witnessed a conflict between two psychic forces and 
must now ask ourselves whence the hostility between these forces 
arises. To what peculiarities, do the unconscious ideas owe the 
fact that the quality of consciousness is withheld from them 
with such stubbornness? Wherein rests their incompatibility 
with the other psychic forces? 

It might at first be open to question whether there are such 
general characteristics. The exclusion from conscious mental 
life depends, as we have seen, upon the attitude of consciousness 
present in such a case and as this attitude varies, the unconscious 
must likewise change too, quite apart from the individual differ- 
ence of the content of consciousness conditioned upon differences 
of experience. On the contrary, we may refer to the fact that 
the fundamental tendencies belonging to the conscious mental 
life are as a whole constant and change only slowly and unnotice- 
ably from epoch to epoch. In their conception of the external 
world, the members of a civilized society hold the essentials in 
common, no matter whether this conception ultimately centers in 
a religious, moral or philosophical view of the world. In spite 
of all the progress in the control of nature, the human race has 
developed so little in regard to mind during thousands of years 
that we may consider the whole of civilized humanity and also 
that of antiquity as a great unit. The important transformations 
we will become acquainted with in the individual investigations; 
in the collective picture, these transformations recede, especially 
if we compare the picture with that of those who stand outside 
of civilized society. The position of primitive man, of the so- 
called savage, toward the external world is fundamentally dif- 
ferent from ours ; further, in the relation between conscious and 
unconscious which exists in his mental life, important deviations 
may be conjectured. 

Thus in spite of the great individual variety of the uncon- 
scious, it is not arbitrary and lawless but definitely established 
with regular, constantly recurring characteristics which we must 
learn to recognize so far as they have already been investigated. 

Our first question will naturally concern the origin of the 
unconscious. Since the unconscious stands completely foreign 
and unknown to the conscious personality, the first impulse would 



V 



■■ 



4 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

be to deny connection with consciousness in general. This is the 
manner in which the folk-belief has ever treated it. The bits of 
the unconscious which were visible in abnormal mental states 
passed as proof of "being possessed," that is, they were con- 
ceived as expressions of a strange individual, of a demon, who 
had taken possession of the patient. We, who can no longer rely 
on such supernatural influences, must seek to explain the facts 
psychologically. The hypothesis that a primary division of the 
psychic life exists from birth, contradicts the experience of the 
continual conflict between the two groups of forces, since if the 
separation were present from the beginning, the danger of a 
shifting of boundaries would not exist. The only possible as- 
sumption, which is further confirmed by experience, is that the 
separation does not exist a priori but originates only in the course 
of time. This demarcation of the boundary line must be a 
process which ends before the complete attainment of the normal 
level of culture; thus, we may say it begins in earliest childhood 
and has found a temporary termination about the tjme^of 
puberty. The unconscious originates in the childhood of man,, 
which circumstance affords the explanation for most of its pecu-^ 
k liarities. ty£$($&>kl PX t^JL |vw^«|$&^ ^-V*-^ 

We recognize in childhood a' forerunner of the age which is ' 
capable of reason and this of course is a right view in many re- 
lations. Besides that part of the mental life which we carry over 
from childhood into later life, there remains however another part, 
the real childish, with which we afterwards have nothing more to 
do and which we therefore forget. Only thus are explained the 
great discrepancies which every person displays in his childhood 
memories and these exactly at a time in which he knew quite well 
how to consider and estimate events. Almost everyone remembers 
of his earliest years of childhood only isolated details of in- 
different scenes while he has totally forgotten those incidents 
which were the most important at the time. The purely infantile 
mental powers which are not embodied in the consciousness of 
the adult cannot however be lost. In psychic affairs as in the 
physical world, the law of conservation of energy holds good ; 
the infantile, which was repressed from the conscious mental life, 
did not disappear but formed the nucleus about which the un- 
conscious mental life crystallized. 



1 

\ 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 5 

In what point does the adult differ so fundamentally from 
the child that the mental states of those developmental epochs 
have become quite useless for him? That this point is the 
sexuality will probably awaken universal contradiction, for 
sexuality normally begins, we are assured, with puberty and can 
thus create no typical infantile psychic phenomena. 

The fact of normal childish sexuality, among forms of ac- 
tivity of which, only the onanism of the suckling may be men- 
tioned here, is so easily demonstrable by everyone who comes 
into close contact with children, such as physicians, nurses and 
parents, that their stubborn denial of this phenomenon cannot be 
considered as an objective opinion but only as the result of just \ 
that repression process which will not allow to be brought again | 
before consciousness the elements of the ego which have become 
first worthless and then obstructive to its own development. It 
would be very surprising if so important a source of affect as 
the instincts belonging to the domain of sexuality, which we class 
together under the general term " libido," first made their ap- 
pearance suddenly, upon the attainment of a certain age. As a 
matter of fact, the libido has been present from the very begin- 
ning, only before puberty the phenomena of the instincts belong- 
ing to it find outlet neither in the form of sexual expression of 
the adult nor in a simple unified direction ; rather, each com- 
ponent instinct strives toward its own goal independently of the 
others ; this aim has no similarity to the later sexual aim, the 
sexual act. 

Also, during childhood, we distinguish different phases of 
development, but of these, only the most important can be men- 
tioned here. The first phase embraces that period when the 
child, in its knowledge of the external world, has not yet acquired 
the conception of its own personality as something differentiated 
from the world. In this period, the child seeks to gain sexual 
pleasure on its own body (autoerotism). Besides the genitals, 
all possible parts of the body are taken into consideration, espe- 
cially the lip zone, which can be stimulated by "pleasure suck- 
ing" and the anal zone which can be stimulated by the retention 
of fecal masses. 

The decisive transition point is formed by a stage which is 



O SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

normally interposed between the period of autoerotic activity and 
that of love of an object; out of consideration for the patho- 
logical fixation of this transition stage to be observed later, we 
designate it as " narcissism." Narcissism is characterized by the 
fact that the libido, which, in contrast to the ego instincts, finds 
from the very beginning its autoerotic gratification on various 
parts of the body, having now become unified, has for the time 
found its object in its own self considered as a whole. In a cer- 
tain measure, the man is narcissistic even if he has found ex- 
ternal objects for his libido; the degree of this attitude is of 
tremendous significance for the development of the character and 
personality. 

The next phase shows the "love of an object" but this love 
develops under peculiar conditions. The significance of an ex- 
clusively sexual organ comes to the genitals only with the later 
evolution which concludes with puberty. The exclusive sexual 
aim of normal, sexually mature persons connected with this 
sexual evolution does not yet come into consideration ; in its 
place, there appear according to the instinctive tendencies, various 
forms of gratification : sexual curiosity and pleasure from un- 
dressing, the infliction and endurance of pain, etc. Thus, that 
condition, which, occuring in unchanged persistence in an adult 
would constitute a perversion (exhibitionism, peeping, sadism, 
masochism) forms an expression of the normal sexuality of 
childhood. 

Also, the sexual objects appearing in this second phase of 
infantilism are essentially different from those of the adult. The 
relatively minor importance of the genitals for the sexual rela- 
tion directed toward other persons and the ignorance of the 
differences in structure and function of the male and female 
sexual apparatus, render it impossible for the child to take into 
consideration the distinction of sex in the consummation of his 
erotic relations. Further, apart from this fact, the child's love is 
most frequently directed toward those persons who would not 
be so thought of by mature cultured people, namely, the members 
of his own family, especially the parents and also the nurses as 
substitutes for the parents. 

He who takes offence at the statement that the first inclina- 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 7 

tions of a person are regularly incestuous, should be reminded 
that the childish eroticism, even if it is ever so strong in affect, is 
accustomed to express itself only with limited aim in the harm- 
less form of affection. For the child growing up in the bosom of 
the family, other relations of the same intimacy are inconceivable 
and also for the parents, it has ever been considered the most 
.beautiful privilege that the first affection of their children should 
be directed toward them. Soon, the child begins to show a pref- 
erence for one of the parents and indeed usually, since the 
attraction of the sexes applies also to the relation between parents 
and children, for that parent of the opposite sex, by whom it is 
itself considered with especial tenderness. With the other 
parent, often also with the brothers and sisters, the child easily 
comes into a relation of rivalry, since it wishes to share with 
no one; besides love, there then appears hostility and the fer- 
vent wish for the elimination of the rival. 

Then, in the period of puberty, the genital zone attains its 
primacy, the individual instincts lose their independence and 
arrange themselves for the purpose of attaining the normal 
sexual aim. Certain ones, as the instinct for mastery in the 
male, find their gratification in the sexual act itself; others, for 
example, the instinct for looking (Schautrieb), by affording the 
forepleasure, serve the purpose of creating the tension which 
prepares for the sexual act and brings about the end-pleasure. 
In addition to the renunciation of the isolated gratification of 
these partial instincts, the erotic inclination toward the members 
of the family must also be abandoned ; sexuality adapted to a 
new aim is demanded ; further, another object outside the family 
must be found, all of which transformations normally come to 
successful accomplishment after some groping attempts. 

Thus, for him who has puberty behind him, sexuality is noth- 
ing new ; further, he must also forego some of the hitherto 
customary modes of gratification, in particular the sexual pleasure 
derived from his own body as object and the incestuous fixa- 
tion on his nearest relatives. If one of the component instincts 
was especially strongly developed, it will not receive sufficient 
satisfaction under the new regime. 

Just as little as the libido appears in the mental life as some- 



8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

thing new, even so little can it again disappear from the same. 
Every striving toward the attainment of pleasure is indestruct- 
ible. The libido can change its form under the influence of 
internal or external forces but the instinct will constantly be 
nourished from its old sources. If, under such a change, a gain 
of pleasure is sacrificed in part or in whole, because in the 
changed form, the instinct no longer finds adequate possibility 
for gratification, this instinct nevertheless still continues its exist- 
ence and with its impetuous demands for the old pleasure, be- 
comes a dangerous enemy of the new order of things. 

The result of this relation would be a never-ending conflict; 
consciousness, which in the service of the control of reality, 
should be directed toward impressions coming from the external 
world, might be completely engrossed in the endopsychic per- 
ception of this struggle and the psychic economy permanently 
disturbed. Only the repression of the overpowering forms of 
gratification of instinct from the visual field of consciousness 
makes it possible to keep consciousness open for sense percep- 
tions and the mind in equilibrium. The mechanisms employed 
in this task we shall soon examine. 

The phenomena which we have thus far recognized form 
only the nucleus of the unconscious, not in any way its whole 
extent. Indeed, in no field is so much renunciation expected of 
a man in the course of his development as in his sexuality and 
scarcely anywhere is this renunciation harder to carry through ; 
in addition, still other wishes left permanently unfulfilled, even 
though arising from the pure ego instincts, reinforce and interact 
with this material to form the content of the unconscious. 
Often we are confronted with the necessity of recognizing an 
unpleasant reality in which our wishfulfillment finds no place and 
with the further necessity of making our peace with this stern 
reality. Now that is a task which the normal person is regularly 
able to accomplish in his consciousness. But with the appearance 
of the need to escape an especially painful conflict, the attractive 
force of that first repression process may work so enticingly that 
this recent denial finds its solution in the same manner, through 
repression. With the exception of those cases where the original 
repression process had not proceeded smoothly, this later repres- 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 9 

sion also succeeds. As a result of failure in this repression, the 
neurosis makes its appearance. But also with healthy indi- 
viduals, under the favoring cooperation of the sleeping state, 
the unfulfilled wishes of the present find connection with those 
of childhood and from this union arises the structure of the 
dream. Since every person is not only a dreamer but also in 
^ some one part, at least, closely related.to the neurotic, perhaps in 
the anxiety-affects which he suffers, perhaps only in the pro- 
duction of the little mistakes of daily life, the assumption is 
justified that the normal individual also removes by repression a 
part of his mental conflicts, especially those which invite this 
fate by their resemblance to the conflicts of childhood. 

We turn now to that group of forces which cause the repres- 
sion. One of these forces, we have already recognized, namely, 
the demand arising from the organic changes occurring before 
and during puberty, as a result of which, the psychic primacy of 
the genitals corresponding to the bodily development and the 
unification of the component instincts directed toward the activity 
of these organs, became necessary. The weightiest factor, how-, 
ever, is the demand which the cultural environment imposes on) 
the growing individual, to which he cannot submit himself with--' 
out giving up his infantile wish-goals. The repression indicates 
the measure of the sacrifice which the cultural development of a 
community enjoins on its members. The means by which the 
cultural demands make themselves evident to the adolescent are 
manifold. By far the most important is the influence of the 
objects of the infantile love-choice, the education by the parents 
or their representatives. 

Here must be mentioned some of the instinct-mechanisms by 
which the successful division between conscious and unconscious 
is first rendered possible. Where love and hate, both directed 
toward the same object, are opposed to each other, the weaker 
one must sink into the unconscious. This ambivalent relation 
may also be shown with certain instincts which are composed of 
a pair of component opposites (for example, sadism and maso- 
chism). Since the two contrary instincts cannot exist side by 
side, the stronger assumes the initiative and crowds the weaker 
into the unconscious. 



10 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

In all cases, the effect of the ambivalence is to cause the 
victorious member, in order to assure its supremacy, to show an 
unusual intensity in the conscious mental life (reaction forma- 
tion) ; to this reaction formation the instinct under subjection 
also affords a contribution of energy since the possibility of direct 
expression was taken from it by the repression. Still more im- 
portant for the purposes of civilization is the ability of many 
instincts to change their modes of gratification by accepting 
another aim for winning of pleasure in place of the one previ- 
ously enjoyed; the two modes of gratification must be similar 
and between the old and new aims there must be an associative 
connection. In this way, it is possible to divert at least a portion 
of the gross sexual instincts of the child to higher cultural aims 
(sublimation). The portion not divertible, so far as it may not 
be directly gratified, falls under the repression. 

Because certain desires are repressed, it does not follow that a 
wish which is unconscious and cut off from direct affect-expres- 
sion, can develop no further activity; on the contrary, the re- 
pressed wish exercises a determining influence on the most im- 
portant processes of the mental life as far as this is possible 
during the condition of being excluded from consciousness. In 
this matter, there are two points which need a further elucidation : 
first, by what mechanisms does the unconscious succeed in becom- 
ing active without offending against the condition imposed by the 
repression? Second, in what psychical products do unconscious 
processes or those which are directed by the unconscious, have 
an especially large share? 

The mechanisms by which the repressed instinctive impulses 
and unconscious wishes succeed in breaking through the repres- 
sion and influencing the actions and thought of the civilized man 
in his relation to reality serve collectively, as the nature of the 
conflict with the unconscious demands, for the distortion of the 
unconscious and its compromise with consciousness. This dis- 
tortion becomes developed to various degrees according to the 
stage of repression, the mental status of the individual and the 
degree of civilization of the race; in short, corresponding to the 
prevailing relation of consciousness to the unconscious ; while 
this conflict between consciousness and the unconscious is going 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION II 

on, it produces various valuable compromise products in social 
relations. As psychoanalysis learns to consider the ideational 
life, in general, as counterplay of the instinctive life, so the indi- 
vidual mental mechanisms of distortion and compromise forma- 
tion correspond to the different possibilities of the fate of instinct ; 
among these possible results, we recognize besides the repression, 
still others, especially tranformations of instincts (such as the 
inversion into the opposite). We have now to devote special 
attention to those processes which, unlike the repression, do not 
find an end with the banishment into the unconscious, but send 
substitute structures into consciousness which are derived from 
the original sources of affect. This fate may befall both the 
instinct in question and its sublimated representative. For 
example, we recognize in the mental field the mechanism of 
biased projection, by means of which an inner, unbearable per- 
ception is projected outward; another example is the mechanism 
of "splitting into parts" (dissociation) which separates into the 
constituent parts the elements usually united in the unconscious, 
especially contradictions (of ambivalence, contrary meaning, 
etc.) ; this mechanism of splitting makes contrasts in order to 
render possible the conscious acceptation of the separate im- 
pulses which have become unbearable to one another. On the 
other hand, we have what you might call the introacting mech- 
anisms of the real repression and the condensation (contamina- 
tion) which seek to save or blend the elements which have be- 
come unbearable to consciousness, especially contrasts. Finally, 
there corresponds to the inversion of instinct, the representation 
by the opposite, in which a shocking unconscious element is 
usually represented by its opposite excessively emphasized in 
consciousness. Other mechanisms exercise a distorting and com- 
promise-forming influence by the inversion of affect, by the dis- 
placement of the affect from the important to the non-essential, 
and lastly by the shifting of sensations or the perception of these 
from shocking to innocent places (displacement from below 
upward) . 

While the mechanisms named, even if acting under the biased, 
distorting compulsion of the conscious censor, nevertheless, work 
according to their own laws which are inherent in the uncon- 



12 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

scious because of its close relation to the instinctive life, still 
there are other influences, proceeding from the logical and formal 
demands of consciousness, which compel still further modifica- 
tions of the unconscious material. In this group belongs, first of 
all, the so-called secondary elaboration of the dream, which seeks 
to adapt to the demands of the fully conscious psychic judgment 
the unconscious material which is in certain parts too much dis- 
torted, in other parts too little distorted, and therefore at first, 
unintelligible, defective or too shocking. In this over-elabora- 
tion and arrangement, isolated elements of the unconscious, which 
are no longer intelligible, are afterwards given a logical motive in 
favor of the connection striven after; in the course of develop- 
ment, these elements often, indeed usually, receive a new, as one 
might say, systematized sense. This kind of secondary elabora- 
tion, namely, the mechanism of rationalization or systematiza- 
tion proceeding from consciousness, which is of far reaching im- 
portance for the origin of the psychoanalytic understanding, 
especially of the great achievements of civilization, represents an 
appropriate supplement to the mechanisms of the unconscious by 
arranging and elaborating the biased, distorted unconscious con- 
tributions of the phantasy and mental activity to new, useful con- 
nections. The knowledge of this process (rationalization) and 
the possibility of its reduction to the impelling forces of the un- 
conscious, permit psychoanalysis to hold fast to the principle of 
over-determination of all psychic phenomena, so far as the uncon- 
scious shares in them, even where a logical, satisfactory meaning 
and a fully conscious understanding seems to render any further 
explanation of a phenomenon superfluous and excluded. So 
little, however, as the knowledge of the conscious part in itself 
alone, affords the full understanding of a mental performance, 
even so little may the consideration of the unconscious motives 
by themselves alone exhaust the full significance ; still, the uncon- 
scious motives alone render intelligible the genesis of the mental 
production and also the process of rationalization itself in its rela- 
tion to the denial of the repressed material. 

A further, formal factor, to which the unconscious must con- 
form in its sometime entrance into consciousness, is the attempt 
at dramatic form which appears in the culturally valuable per- 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 3 

f ormances, especially the artistic ones, not less plainly than in the 
dream life. It is conceivable without further discussion, that the 
material in which an unconscious impulse manifests itself, must 
not only influence the definite form but also the content in a cer- 
tain sense, that thus, for example, the poet must bring the same 
feeling to expression differently from the painter; the phi- 
losopher, the same thoughts differently from the writer of myths. 
And further, the temporary state of mind will make itself evident 
in the representation so that the inspired religious writer will 
afford different expression to the same emotions than the matter- 
of-fact expositor; and the lunatic represent the same impulse 
differently from the dreamer. 

A final means of expression of the repressed material, which, 
on account of its especial suitability for disguising the uncon- 
scious material and its adaptability (compromise formation) to 
new contents of consciousness, finds great favor, is the symbol. 
We understand under this term, a special kind of indirect repre- 
sentation which is distinguished by certain peculiarities from the 
closely related figures of speech, such as simile, metaphor, alle- 
gory, allusion and other forms of pictorial representation of 
thought material (after. the manner of the rebus). In a measure, 
the symbol represents an ideal union of all these means of ex- 
pression : it is a representative pictorial substitute expression for 
something hidden, with which it has perceptible characteristics in 
common or is associatively joined by internal connections. Its 
essence consists in the possession of two or more meanings, as it 
has itself also arisen by a kind of condensation, an amalgamation 
of individual characteristic elements. The tendency of the 
symbol from the ideal toward the evident puts it close to primi- 
tive thought ; by this relationship, symbolization belongs essen- 
tially to the unconscious but, as compromise formation, lacks in 
no way the conscious determinants which condition in various 
degrees symbol formation and symbol interpretation. 

If one wishes to understand the many-layered strata and 
arrangement of symbol interpretations and gain a knowledge of 
symbols, he must apply himself to a genetic consideration of the 
same. He will thereby learn that the symbol formation is not, 
as its multiplicity would lead one to expect, arbitrary and de- 










v i 








- : 




ns7 



14 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

pendent on individual differences, but that it follows definite laws 
and leads to widely distributed, universal, human structures which 
are typical as regards time, place, sex and race distinctions, and 
indeed the great languages. Concerning the typical, general 
human significance, the esthetician Dilthey says : " If one under- 
stands under a natural symbol, the pictorial material which stands 
in close and constant relation to an inner state, then the compara- 
tive consideration shows, that on the basis of our psychological 
nature, a circle of natural symbols exists for dream and delusion, 
as for speech and poetry. Since the most important relations of 
reality, in general, are related and the heart of man in general 
the same, fundamental myths pervade humanity. Such symbols 
are: the relation of the father to his children, the relation of the 
sexes, war, robbery and victory." 

The investigation of typical symbol forms and the restoration 
of the forgotten meanings of these by the collaboration of various 
assisting sciences (as history of civilization, linguistics, ethnog- 
raphy, investigation of myths, etc.) has scarcely been attempted 
as yet. The best studied psychoanalytically and also the first to 
be verified by the history of civilization is that great and highly 
important group of symbols which serve to represent sexual ma- 
terial and erotic relations, the sexual symbols as we are ac- 
customed to call them. The prevalence of sexual symbolic mean- 
ings is, however, not explained merely by the individual experi- 
ence that no instinct is subjected to the cultural suppression to the 
same extent and so withdrawn from direct gratification as the 
sexual instinct built up from the most diverse "perverse" com- 
ponents, the mental domain of which, the erotic, is therefore sus- 
ceptible of, and in need of, extensive indirect representation. A 
far greater importance for the genesis of symbolism is afforded 
by the fact that to the sexual organs and functions, in primitive 
civilizations, an importance which is quite inconceivable to our 
minds, was attributed ; of this difference, we can gain a closer idea 
from the results of ethnographic investigation and the remains 
saved in cult and myth. 1 To this sexual exaggeration of primi- 

1 Compare R. Payne Knight, Le culte du Priape, Brussels, 1883, and 
Dulaure, Die Zeugung in Glauben, Sitten und Brauchen der Volker, Ger- 
man translation and amplification by Krauss, Reiskel und Ihm. 



/ 






THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION IS 






tive man and to the limitation which at some time became neces- 
sary, we owe the foundations of civilization, just as we are in- 
debted for its further improvement to the continued sublimation 
of individual component instincts which have been ungratified 
and become repressed. As an example, when we to-day find 
ploughing and creation of fire applied by a dreamer as a com- 
pletely unconscious symbol of the sexual act, the study of the 
history of civilization teaches that these performances have 
originally really represented the sexual act, that is, were invested 
with the same libidinous energies, eventually also with the same 
accompanying ideas as these. A classical example of this is 
afforded by the fire creation in India, which is there represented 
under the picture of coition. In the Rig Veda (III, 29, 1), we 
read: 

"This is the fire-drill; the generator (the male rubbing stick) 
is prepared ! Bring the generatrix (the female rubbing stick) ; 
we will twirl the fire after the old style. In the two rubbing 
sticks dwells the judge of nature (Agni) like the fruit of love 
which has been introduced into the pregnant women. ... In her 
who has spread out her legs enters as a herald (the male stick)." 
(After L. v. Schroder's translation in " Mysterium und Mimus im 
Rig Veda," page 260). When the Indian lights a fire, he offers 
^^ a holy prayer which refers to a myth. He seizes a stick of wood 
with the words : 2 " You are the birthplace of fire," lays thereon 
two blades of grass. " You are the two testicles," thereupon, he 
seizes the wood lying underneath : " You are Urvaci." He then 
smears the wood with butter, saying, " You are strength," places 
it then on the wood lying on the ground and says : " You are 
Pururavas," etc. Thus, he considers the wood lying on the 
ground with its little hollow as the representation of the con- 
ceiving goddess and the upright stick as the sexual member of the 
impregnating god. Concerning the diffusion of this idea, the well 
known ethnologist, Leo Frobenius, says: "The fire-drilling as it 
is to be found among most peoples represents thus among the 
ancient Indians the sexual act. I may be permitted to point out 
in this connection that the ancient Indians were not alone in this 

2 According to Schroder, the oldest ritual texts, the Jajurweden, 
already introduce this formula. 



1 6 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

conception. The South Africans have exactly the same view. 
The wood lying on the ground is called by them ' female shame,' 
the upright piece, ' the male.' 3 Schinz has explained this in his 
time for some races and since then the wide diffusion of this view 
in South Africa, and for example among the races living in the 
East, has been found." (Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, Berlin, 
1904, page 338 ff.) 

Between the two extreme stages, that of actual identification 
(in custom) and that of unconscious application in symbol (in 
dream), lie other, more or less conscious, symbolic meanings, 
which, in the degree in which they have become unrecognizable, 
have been precipitated in speech. Further plain reference to the 
sexual symbolic significance of fire-lighting, we find in the myth 
of the stealing of fire by Prometheus, the sexual symbolic founda- 
tion of which, the mythologist, Kuhn (1859) has recognized. 
Like the Prometheus saga, other traditions also bring into con- 
nection the creation by the heavenly fire, the lightning. Thus, 
O. Gruppe 4 says concerning the saga of Semele, out of whose 
burning body, Dionysos was born, it is "probably a very scanty 
remnant of the old legendary type which had reference to the 
kindling of the sacrificial fire " and its name " perhaps originally 
meant the tablet or table, the under rubbing stick (compare 
Hesych, o-c/a&Vt; rpd-n-e^w . . .). In the soft wood of the latter, the 
spark ignited, in the birth of which the ' mother ' is burnt up." 
Further, in the mythically adorned story of the birth of Alexander 
the Great, we read that his mother Olympia, in the night before 
her wedding, dreamed that a mighty thunderstorm enveloped her 
and the lightning penetrated her womb in a flame, from which, a 
furious fire burst out and disappeared in farther and farther 
consuming flames 5 (Droysen, History of Alexander the Great, 
page 69) . Here belong further the famous fable of the magician, 
Virgil, who took vengeance on a prudish beauty by extinguishing 

3 In Hebrew, the expressions for male and female signify: the borer 
and the hollowed. 

4 Griech. Mythol. u. Relig. Gesch., Vol. II (Munich, 1906), p. 1415 if. 

5 Similarly, Hecuba, pregnant with Paris, dreamed that she brought 
a burning brand into the world which set the whole city on fire. (Com- 
pare in this connection the burning of the Temple of Ephesus in the night 
of the birth of Alexander.) 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 7 

all the fire of the city and allowing the citizens to light their 
new fire only on the genitals of the woman exposed naked to 
view ; opposed to this commandment for fire-lighting, stand other 
traditions in the sense of the Prometheus saga as prohibitions of 
the same, as the legend of Amor and Psyche, which forbids the 
inquisitive wife scaring away the nocturnal lover by striking a 
light or the tale of Periander whom his mother visited by night 
under the same conditions as unrecognized beloved. Our 
present-day speech has also preserved much of this symbolism: 
we speak of the " light of life," of " glowing with love," of 
" being infatuated " in the sense of being in love and call the 
beloved, " flame." 

Corresponding to the lower rubbing stick then, every fireplace, 
altar, hearth, oven, lamp, etc., is a female symbol. Thus, for 
example, in the Satan's mass, the genitals of an undressed re- 
cumbent woman serve as an altar. To the Greek Periander, was 
sent according to Herodotus (V, 92) by his dead wife Melissa, 
a divination with the averment, he has put the bread in a cold 
oven, which was a sure omen to him " since he slept upon the 
corpse of Melissa." The bread is here compared to the phallus ; 
according to the interesting works of Hofler, namely, that con- 
cerning bread images (" Gebildbrote "), our present-day rolls 
and pretzels imitate the phallus (compare Zentralblatt fiir An- 
thropologic, etc., 1905, p. 78). But the substance produced in the 
bake-oven, the bread, is also compared with that created in the 
mother's body, the child, as the name, body (" Leib ") (only later 
differentiated into "Laib"), and the form with the navel in the 
middle, allow to be recognized. On the other hand, one still 
describes birth in the Tyrol by the expression: "the oven has 
fallen in," as also Franz Moor in Schiller's " Rauber " sees the 
only brotherly relation to Karl in the fact that " they were both 
out of the same oven." But the sexual meaning extends to every- 
thing which comes into contact with the original symbol. The 
eating, by which the stork lets the child fall, becomes the female 
symbol, the chimney-sweeper the phallic symbol, as one may 
still recognize in its present significance of good luck; for most 
of our good luck symbols were originally symbols of f ruitfulness, 
as the horseshoe, the clover leaf, the mandrake and others, and 



1 8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

here, again, the sexual life seems closely united to vegetation and 
agriculture. 

For the original sexual meaning of ploughing, outside of the 
phallic significance of almost all kinds of implements, 6 the con- 
ception of the earth as the "old mother" (Urmutter) was the 
determining factor (compare the splendid book of von Dieterich, 
Mutter Erde (Mother Earth), 2d edition, 1913). To antiquity, 
this idea was so common that even dreams, as for example, that 
reported of Julius Caesar and Hippias, of sexual intercourse with 
the mother, were interpreted to mean the mother earth and taking 
possession of it. Also in Sophocles' Oedipus the hero speaks 
repeatedly of the " mother field from which he had sprouted." 
And even Shakespeare in Pericles has Boult, who would de- 
florate the refractory Marina, use a symbol from the fields (IV, 
5) : "And if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she 
shall be ploughed." Too well known to be mentioned here, are 
the names for the male creative processes derived from the 
domain of agriculture (semen, fructification, etc.). The iden- 
tification of human and vegetative fructification underlying these 
speech relations is easily to be recognized in the fructifying 
magic retained until very recent times, which consists in a naked 
couple performing the sexual act in the field, as it were to arouse 
the ground to imitation. Noteworthy in this connection is the 
fact that both in Greek and Latin as well as in Oriental languages, 
" ploughing " is commonly used in the sense of practicing coitus 
(Kleinpaul, Ratsel d. Sprache, p. 136) and that according to 
Winckelmann (Alte Denkmaler der Kunst) the expressions 
" garden," " meadow," " field " in the Greek denoted the female 

6 Knife, hammer, nail, etc. Thor's hammer, with which, especially, 
the marriage was consecrated, is recognized by Cox (Myth, of the Aryan 
Nations, 1870, Vol. II, p. 115), Meyer (Germ. Myth., 1891, p. 212) and 
others in its phallic significance and the corresponding thunderbolt of 
Indra is his phallus (Schlesinger, Gesch. d. Symbols, 1912, p. 438). Con- 
cerning the nail, Hugo Winckler says : " The nail is the tool of fruitful- 
ness, the penis ; hence its figure in the old Babylonian cones is still to be 
recognized, which represent the driven clavus of the Romans ; compare 
Arabic na'al = copulate ('Arabic, Semitic, Oriental')." Mitt. d. Vordera- 
siast. Ges., 1901, 4/5. Still in present-day folk life of Bavaria, Suabia, 
Switzerland, the iron nail plays a role as symbol of the phallus and fruit- 
fulness (Arch. f. Kriminalanthrop., Vol. 20, p. 122). 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 1 9 

genital organ in jokes, which in Solomon's Song is called vine- 
yard. The neurotic counterpart to this symbolizing personifica- 
tion of the earth is found among the North American Indians 
whose resistance against cultivation by ploughing is explained by 
Ehrenreich that they are afraid to injure the skin of the earth- 
mother; here, the identification has succeeded too well, as one 
might say. 

Other symbols of apparently individual significance allow 
their typical form and application to be deciphered from the 
connections with the history of development, as, for example, the 
symbolization of the father as emperor or one of the persons of 
high authority. Here too, the history of civilization shows the 
original real significance of the relation which later continues 
only in the symbol, namely, that the father in the primitive rela- 
tions of his " family " was actually invested with the highest 
degree of power and could dispose of the bodies and lives of his 
"subjects." Concerning the derivation of kingdom from the 
patriarchy in the family, the philologist Max Mttller expresses 
himself as follows : " When the family began to develop into the 
state, then the king in the midst of his people became what the 
father and husband had been in the house: the master, the 
strong protector. 7 Among the manifold terms for king and 
queen, in the Sanscrit, there is simply father and mother. Ganaka 
in Sanscrit means father, from GAN, to beget ; it also appears in 
the Veda as the name of a well-known king. This is the old 
German chuning, English king. Mother in Sanscrit is gani or 
gani, the Greek yvvrj, Gothic quino, Slavic zena, English queen. 
Thus queen (Konigin) originally signifies mother or mistress and 
we see repeatedly how the speech of the family life gradually 
grew to the political speech of the oldest Aryan state." Even at 
the present, this conception of the kingly ruler and of divine and 
spiritual superiority is still alive as " father " in the speech usage. 
Smaller states, in which the relations of the prince to his sub- 
jects are still closer, call their ruler, "Landfather" (Landes- 

7 Father (Vater) is derived from a root PA which means, not beget, 
but protect, maintain, nourish. The father, as procreator, is called in 
Sanscrit, ganitor (genitor). Max Miiller, Essays, Vol. II, Leipsic, 1S69, 
German edition, p. 20. 



20 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

vater) ; for the people of the mighty Russian empire, their czar is 
the " Little Father " as in his time was Attila for the powerful 
Huns (diminutive of Gothic, atta= father). The supreme ruling 
head of the Catholic Church is called by the believers, as repre- 
sentative on earth of God, the Father, "Holy Father" which 
forms in Latin the name "papa" (pope), a term by which our 
children still denote the father. 

These few examples may suffice to characterize the great age, 
the rich content, the extensive and typical field of application, the 
cultural historical as well as individual importance of symbolism 
and to show the continuance of the symbol-forming forces in the 
mental life of present-day civilized people. 

Psychologically considered, the symbol formation remains a 
regressive phenomenon, a reversion to a certain stage of pictorial 
thinking which exists among highly cultured people in clearest 
shape in those exceptional states, in which the conscious adapta- 
tion to reality, is either partially limited, as in the religious and 
artistic ecstasy, or seems totally annulled, as in the dream and 
mental disturbances. Corresponding to this psychological con- 
ception, is the original function of identification underlying sym- 
bolization ; this identification is demonstrable in the history of 
civilization as a means of adaptation to reality which becomes 
superfluous and sinks to the mere significance of a symbol as soon 
as this task of adaptation has been accomplished. Thus, symbol- 
ism seems to be the unconscious precipitate of primitive means 
of adaptation to reality which has become superfluous and un- 
suitable, a sort of lumber-room of culture to which the adult 
person in conditions of reduced or deficient capability of adapting 
to reality, gladly flees, in order to regain his old, long-forgotten 
playthings of childhood. That which later generations know and 
consider only as symbol had in an earlier stage of mental develop- 
ment complete real meaning and value. In the course of develop- 
ment, the original significance fades more and more, or even 
changes, so that speech, folklore, wit, etc., have often preserved 
remnants of the original connection in more or less clear con- 
sciousness. 

By far the most comprehensive and important group of primi- 
tive symbols, which seem quite far-fetched to conscious thought, 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 21 

is composed of those which originally sexualized phenomena and 
processes of the external world in the service of adaptation, in 
order in later stages, to apply these anthropomorphisms, which 
were again separated from this original meaning, as " symbols " 
of sexual affairs. Besides these symbols, there seem to be still 
other forms and mechanisms of symbol formation which, in- 
verted, symbolize the human body, its organic processes and 
mental states by harmless or apparently easily representable things 
of the external world. To this group, belongs the category of 
somatic symbols, best known from the dream investigations of 
Schemer; these somatic symbols represent parts of the body or 
the functions of these in pictorial fashion (for example, sets of 
teeth as rows of houses, pressure of urine as a flood, etc.) ; 
another similar category is that of the so-called (H. Silberer) 
functional symbols which represent plastically, conditions and 
processes of the individual mental life perceived endopsychically 
(the constant functioning of the mind), such as the sad mood, by 
the picture of a dismal landscape, the following of difficult trains 
of thought, by the difficult mounting on a horse which is all the 
time getting farther away, and others. Both these kinds of 
" introjecting" symbol formation, which are apparently con- 
trasted to the first described "projecting" variety of the material 
category which symbolizes the psychic content, might perhaps 
better be considered, not as special kinds of symbol formation, 
but rather as kinds of pictorial representation of physical and 
mental processes occurring regularly, to a certain extent, in the 
real symbol formation. Thus, for example, in the phallic symbol 
of the serpent, besides the form, the ability to rise up, the smooth- 
ness and suppleness of the phallus, especially its dangerousness 
and uncanniness are represented, that is, not essential components 
of the same, but definite mental relationships thereto (anxiety, 
abhorrence), from which relationships, others actually lead to 
other symbolizations of the male member (for example, as bird, 
etc.), while in many symbols, certain somatic attributes and condi- 
tions find representations (cane = erection, syringe =ejaculation, 
empty balloon envelope = flaccidity). 

To sum up, we may specify the following characteristics for 
the real symbol in the psychoanalytic sense, as we recognize it 



2 2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

best in the speech of the dream and also in a series of other 
mental productions : 

Representation for the unconscious, constant meaning, inde- 
pendence of individual conditions, evolutionary foundations, 
speech relationships, phylogenetic parallels (in myths, cult, re- 
ligion, etc.). The occurrence of these conditions under which we 
speak of a symbol and of which, now some, now others are 
demonstrable beyond dispute, affords us at the same time the 
possibility of verifying the symbolic meanings recognized in the 
mental life of the individual and of attaining most valuable cer- 
„tainty in this vague and obscure field. Further corroboration 
for the symbol investigation is afforded by the rich material in 
folklore and wit, which often enough may apply to other fields 
only unconsciously; especially do folklore and wit use sexual 
symbols so that they must be familiar to everyone. 8 Our knowl- 
edge of the symbol receives a further very noteworthy confirma- 
tion and partial enrichment from the psychoanalytic study of 
certain insane patients, among whom, one type, the so-called 
schizo- or paraphrenic has the peculiarity of disclosing to us 
openly the secret symbolic meanings. Finally, we have recently 
gained an experimental method which affords the verification of 
known symbols and the discovery of new individual ones in a 
manner free from all objections, thus destroying every doubt of 
the existence of a sexual dream-symbolism. 9 Likewise, what 

8 Certain forms of wit, closely related to the obscene riddles, were in 
their preponderating number, according to Schultz (Ratsel aus dem hel- 
lenischen Kulturkreise, 1912, II part), "originally no riddles, but symbolic, 
in part, indeed dialogical descriptions of ritualistic processes of the crea- 
tion of fire, gaining of intoxication," which in union with sexual creation 
" stood in the central point of the old Aryan ritual." " If they were sung 
along with the action in question, no hearer could be in doubt of the 
meaning of such a verse." " Only later, when, with the religious practice, 
this understanding faded, did they become riddles and had to be adapted 
to various traditional solutions" (page 117 ff.). 

9 The subject of the experiment is given the hypnotic command to 
dream something definite, some sexual situation. She dreams this but not 
in direct representation as is the case with harmless commands, but in 
symbolical guise, which corresponds completely with that disclosed by 
psychoanalysis in the ordinary dream life. Compare Dr. Karl Scrotter : 
Experimented Traume (Experimental dreams), Zentralblatt fur Psycho- 
analyse, II, 1912. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 23 

may be considered as such an experiment arranged by nature, 
is afforded by certain dreams in which a bodily need of sexual 
or other nature attempts to gratify itself in definite typical sym- 
bols, before the irritation leads to awakening and therewith to the 
appreciation of the symbolic meanings (waking-dream). One 
principle of the symbol investigation which is not to be under- 
estimated is the result which allows us to gain a good meaning and 
deep significance for unintelligible expressions of the mental life. 
This kind of scientific proof in the field of symbol interpreta- 
tion, we share completely with the conception of the investigator 
of speech and myth, Wilhelm Muller, which he has represented 
against his colleagues for more than a half century : " As we 
ascertain the meaning of unknown words by assigning them a 
place, at first according to the context, and consider these mean- 
ings correct if they are suitable in all places where the word 
recurs, so it is with the explanation of a symbol, aside from other 
standpoints, to consider it correct, if it permits of the same ex- 
planation everywhere it occurs, or in a great number of cases, 
arid agrees with the connection of the myth." 

The knowledge of the real unconscious meaning and its com- 
prehension, is neither alike with all symbols nor does it remain 
constant during the course of development and change of signifi- 
cance of the same symbol. Further, the comprehension of the 
symbol is different within a circle of culture holding about the 
same content of consciousness, according to the fields of applica- 
tion, the stratum of population in which it appears and the mental 
condition of the person using it. It shows that the conditions 
for the comprehension of the symbol stand in a contrasting cor- 
relation to the tendencies of the symbol formation. While the 
symbolic representation appears in the service of the unconscious 
desires, in order to smuggle the shocking material in disguised 
form into consciousness, a certain indefiniteness must adhere to 
the symbol which can shade from easily transparent ambiguity 
(in obscene joke and wit) to complete incomprehensibility (in 
dream and neurosis). Between these two possible extreme atti- 
tudes of consciousness to the symbol and its comprehension, lies 
a series of what might be called complete symbolizations, such as 
are shown in religion, myth and art ; these symbolizations on the 



24 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

one hand render possible an intelligible representation and con- 
ception but on the other hand are not without a deep uncon- 
scious meaning. 

At this point we come to the second of the questions pro- 
pounded above, namely, in what psychic products, unconscious 
processes or those processes derived from the unconcious, assert 
themselves most plainly by means of the mechanisms described. 

We have already mentioned some formations which signify a 
disturbance of normal mental activity and could not deny their 
close relationship to the unconscious. It is just these cases, 
where the unsatisfying outcome of the conflict between uncon- 
cious and repression, supported by other circumstances, causes 
illness ; such maladies, resulting from unsuccessful repression or 
that repression which has again become regressive, we number 
among the psychoses, if they permanently destroy the normal 
relation to reality; we call them psychoneuroses, if in spite of 
the partial regression to the infantile attitude, the essential traits 
of cultural personality have remained intact. A related case is 
that of hypnosis and suggestion, of which normal and healthy 
individuals are also susceptible. A temporary loss of the func- 
tion of reality appears in sleep, during which a mental activity 
comes before consciousness as the dream which is dominated 
chiefly by the unconscious. Finally, there belong in this category, 
the errors of execution, such as errors of speech and writing, 
forgetting of names, mistakes and the like, which point plainly to 
the working of a psychic force opposed to the conscious attitude. 

All these phenomena have the common characteristic that they 
seek to sever and weaken the relations to the fellow men. The 
isolating characteristic of the neuroses and psychoses and the 
tendency of these to take men from vocation and family is gen- 
erally recognized. In hypnosis, the hypnotized person is sub- 
jected to the influence of one particular person so that he seems 
cut off from all others. In sleep, this separation is carried out in 
the most complete manner imaginable, without the exception of 
even one person. The faulty performances of forgetting and 
the like, usually have the effect of influencing the ability of com- 
munication, even if in an insignificant manner; others, as for 
example, mistakes (of action) often lead to injury of the sur- 
roundings. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS AND ITS FORMS OF EXPRESSION 25 

It would be conceivable that the unconscious, which does 
indeed arise essentially in the presocial time of humanity, might ex- 
press itself also preeminently in a social or antisocial phenomenon 
like those thus far enumerated. As a matter of fact, however, 
the unconscious is of such importance in the mental life that an 
important cultural progress against its resistance could have 
scarcely succeeded. It was necessary, on the contrary, to win the 
extraordinarily intense instinctive forces from this source for the 
social and cultural work, since without the immense energy 
afforded by them, no result would have been attainable. 

The useful activities favoring the prolongation of life and 
elevation of the standard of living were mostly uncomfortable 
and tiresome. If things could be so arranged that the repressed 
wishes would find a gratification, even if only a symbolic one, 
then these important acts would become pleasant and in this way, 
a real stimulus would be provided for their execution. For such 
a gaining of pleasure in symbolic activity, the sexual wishes were 
best suited, since with them, the aim can be displaced from 
reality to the hallucinatory gratification of phantasy easier than 
with the ego instincts, where the real gratification is necessary for 
the existence of the individual and which, as for example hunger, 
can endure no other form of gratification. 

We have seen that the unconscious is that part of the mental 
life which, bent upon immediate gain of pleasure, will not submit 
to adaptation to reality. So far, then, as the human mental 
activity had to deal exclusively with reality and its domination, 
nothing could be started with the unconscious. But in all those 
fields where a diversion from reality was allowed the mind, where 
phantasy might stir its wings, its field of application was assured. 
Hence, if we find in older stages of culture, activities, which for 
us have nothing to do with phantasy, as agriculture or administra- 
tion of justice, carried out with symbolic phantastic acts, this is 
explained by the fact that amid primitive relations the demands 
of the unconscious were far more strongly accentuated than 
with us. 

Other products of culture, in which the world of phantasy 
played an important role, have been able to preserve their char- 
acteristics pure, or to yield them to the developing function of 



26 . SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

reality ; in this group belong religion and art with all their fore- 
runners and offshoots. 

Thus, we see before us a double series: on one side, the 
asocial, the forms of expression of the unconscious limited and 
accounted to the individual, especially the dream and the neurosis, 
which will not further engage our attention here; on the other 
side, the phenomena most important for the origin and develop- 
ment of civilized life, myth and religion, art and philosophy, 
ethics and law. The psychological share which must have been 
necessary for the mental sciences devoted to these structures can 
therefore never be elucidated with entire satisfaction if the 
psychology of the unconscious is not included. 



CHAPTER II 
Investigation of Myths and Legends 

The justification for utilizing the methods and results of 
psychoanalysis for the comprehension of the origin, variation and 
significance of mythical traditions is founded on the fact that 
in that kind of investigations, the boundaries of the true psycho- 
analytic domain are not in the least overstepped. Aside from the 
fact that the myth has always been considered as needing in- 
terpretation, it is scarcely to be denied that in the mythical and 
legendary tales of primitive and cultured peoples, independently 
of whatever meaning and content these may have, we are dealing 
with the products of pure phantasy; this conception affords us 
surety for the justified and necessary share of psychological con- 
sideration in the investigation of myths. It is in the illumination 
of the human phantasy life and its productions that psycho- 
analysis has accomplished its greatest achievement: namely, the 
discovery of the powerful unconscious instinctive forces which 
impel to phantasy formation, the elucidation of the mental mech- 
anisms which have shared in the origin of this phantasy life and 
in the comprehension of the predominant symbolic forms of 
expression which came to be employed. 

The first incitement to psychoanalytic labors in attempting to 
understand myth formation and myth significance proceeded from 
the insight into the origin and meaning of dreams, for which we 
are indebted to Freud. Of course, psychoanalysis was not the 
first to call attention to the relations between dream and myth ; 
the extraordinary importance of dream life for poetry and myth 
has been recognized at all times, as P. Ehrenreich 10 points out. 
Not only may dreams have been the only source of myth forma- 
tion among many peoples according to their own statements, but 

10 Die allgemeine Mythologie und ihre ethnologischen Grundlagen 
(General Mythology and its Ethnological Foundations), Leipzic, 1910, 
page 149 (Mythol. Bibl., IV, 1). 

27 



28 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

further, well-known mythologists like Laistner, Mannhardt, 
Roscher and recently also Wundt, have deeply appreciated the 
significance of the dream life, especially of the anxiety dream, 
for the understanding of individual groups of myths, or at least 
groups of motives. If this point of view has, in recent times, 
been brought to some discredit by the " interpretation of nature " 
which has crowded to the foreground, still it nevertheless re- 
mains in the eyes of keen observers, as for example, Ehrenreich, 
undisputed as valuable knowledge. One understands, however, 
the brusque opposition of the purely internal psychological method 
of consideration which proceeds from the dream life and the 
conception which takes as a basis merely the real universe (proc- 
esses of nature), when one measures the narrow scope of appli- 
cation of a method of explanation which remains so much re- 
tricted to the type of the anxiety dream and hence clings to the 
incomprehensible dream event and dream content. 

Though the parallel consideration of dream and myth and 
therewith the psychological method of consideration was formerly 
recognized in its principal justification, still there was necessary 
to a deeper understanding of the dream life, a corresponding 
progress in the field of myth investigation. The first and at the 
same time, from many points of view, the most important step in 
this direction, we recognize in JEreiid/s.. ^interpretation of the 
ancient CEdipus myth, which he was able to explain on the basis 
of typical dreams of male individuals of the death of the father 
and sexual intercourse with the mother, as a general human ex- 
pression of these primitive wish impulses which had actually 
existed in past ages but have since been intensively repressed. 
The importance of this discovery deserves to be examined more 
closely and to be protected from misunderstanding; an explana- 
tion of it may introduce us quite a ways into the methods of 
psychoanalytic myth interpretation. 

As is seen, this progress leads far beyond the previous purely 
external parallelization to the common unconscious sources by 
which, not only the dream productions, in the same manner as the 
myth formations, were nourished, but all phantasy products in 
general as well. Psychoanalysis has thus, not only a definite 
interpretation to propose, but at the same time establishes the 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 29 

necessity of myth interpretation in general, by means of the share 
which the unconscious has in myth formation. Further, it offers 
in place of the superficial comparison, a genetic method of con- 
sideration which allows myths to be conceived of as the distorted 
remnants of wish phantasies of whole nations, as you might say, 
the secular dreams of young humanity. As the dream in an 
individualistic sense, so the myth in a phylogenetic sense, repre- 
sents a piece of the past mental life of childhood; it is the most 
brilliant confirmation of the psychoanalytic method of considera- 
tion that it finds the experience of unconscious mental life gained 
from individual psychology again in the mythical traditions of 
past ages identical in content. In particular, the portentous con- 
flict of the child's mental life, the ambivalent attitude toward the 
parents and toward the family with all its many sided relations 
(sexual curiosity, etc.), has been shown to be the chief motive of 
myth formation and the essential content of mythical traditions. 
Indeed, it may be shown that the development of mythical ideas, 
in their widest extent, reflects just the cultural relations of the 
individual in the family and the latter in the tribal relationships. 
It is an especially good recommendation for the Freudian in- 
terpretation of the CEdipus saga that it interpolates nothing in the 
material and needs for its comprehension no auxiliary assump- 
tion, but points out the meaning of the myth directly in the ele- 
ments given. The only presupposition is the bit of unfrightened 
investigating spirit — as it is represented in CEdipus himself 11 — 
which places the psychoanalyst, schooled in the insight into the 
dream life, in a position to believe in the mental reality of the 
matter related. We have therewith formulated the most im- 
portant fundamental concept of the psychoanalytic myth concep- 
tion, 12 at the same time bearing in mind that the undisguised 

11 One may compare the place in Schopenhauer's writings on Goethe 
(of Nov. 11, 1815) : "The courage to take no question to heart is what 
makes the philosopher. The latter must resemble the CEdipus of Sopho- 
cles, who, seeking explanation concerning his own horrible fate, seeks 
further without hesitation, even when he already perceives from the an- 
swers that the most terrible thing for him will result. But, then, most 
of us have within us the Jocasta who begs CEdipus, for the sake of all 
the gods, not to seek further : and we yield to her." (Ferenczi, Imago, 
I, p. 276 ff.) 

12 This is also a fundamental concept of the psychoanalytic method of 
consideration in general. 



3° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

naivete of the Greek fable of CEdipus, which admits of its ap- 
plication without commentary, represents only an exceptional case 
of especial clearness ; otherwise, the dream pictures drawn on for 
the comprehension of the CEdipus fable differ, in their trans- 
parency, from the regular type of dream structure strikingly 
enough. It is not necessary here to repeat the reason given by 
Freud for this; for us, it is certain that the majority of myths, 
as well as the majority of our nocturnal dreams, disclose their 
deeper meaning only after a more or less complicated work of 
interpretation. 

Further, this viewpoint, like the parallelization with the 
dream, has been in no way appreciated exclusively by psycho- 
analysis. The view that myths in addition to their manifest 
meaning — which is not always comprehensible without further 
study — must have another secret meaning, that only thus are they 
to be explained, is of great antiquity ; perhaps as old as the myths 
themselves, which, even when they appeared, just like dreams, 
may have aroused a strange incomprehension, so that it was con- 
cluded to attribute objective reality to the tale in order to believe 
it. It is now, according to various psychoanalytic results, very 
probable even if not unconditionally demonstrable, that the 
process, which in an early stage of rich development, is called 
myth formation and which later separates into cultistic, religious, 
artistic, philosophic endeavors, took its beginning at a period 
when man no longer dared confess openly his naive faith in the 
psychic reality of his wishes and appetites, thus, at a time which 
we recognize in the development of the individual as the beginning 
of the repression. 

With this insight, a second important principle of psycho- 
analytic investigation of myths is given. If the myth is, as we 
know from the dream and other mental performances, a product 
of powerful mental tendencies clamoring for expression and at 
the same time also of the counter impulses which keep these from 
complete achievement, then the activity of these tendencies must 
find expression in its content and a psychological interpretation 
will have to find its task in the elucidation of these distortions. 
Of course, in doing this, the aim and object of the investigation 
must always be kept in mind : by the exhibition of the unconscious 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 3* 

instinctive forces which participated in the myth formation to 
establish the secret psychological meaning of the myth ; in doing 
this neither the oldest form of the mythical tale nor the original 
conscious significance of the same is in any way reconstructed, 
the restoration of this being the special task of mythology. 
Although it is not to be denied that in many cases the more 
original tradition stands closer to the unconscious meaning, since, 
with the progress of the repression, farther reaching distortions 
are always joined, still the principle of the gradual return of the 
original repressed material should not be forgotten ; this principle 
permits us to discover, often in even highly complicated and 
late formations, as for example in legends, less disguised bits of 
the unconscious meaning. That far also, psychoanalysis will 
not be able to escape the comparative investigation of myths and 
legends ; of course not to the extent of making the ultimate aim, 
the constructing of the original formation of the myth, rather 
with a view of inferring the unconscious meaning which prob- 
ably will not have been fully apparent even in the earliest form. 
For the need for the construction and repetition of myths can 
have originated only with the renunciation of certain real sources 
of pleasure and the necessity for a compensatory substitute for 
this renunciation in gratification by phantasy. This real re- 
nunciation seems to be the phylogenetic counterpart of our 
psychic repression and compels the wish-phantasy to resemble 
distortions like those of the repression, even if not such refined 
ones. Naturally, there exists also in the psychological reduction 
of the distorted mythical tradition to its unconscious instinctive 
forces, the first mentioned fundamental principle of law, for there 
is demanded here, the same recognition of the inferred interpreta- 
tion as a psychic reality as that which, in the forms closely related 
to the CEdipus saga, had to sanction merely the manifest content 
as the real meaning. Thus, psychoanalysis reconstructs the wish- 
fulfillment which was formerly consciously tolerated, then for- 
bidden and allowed in consciousness only again distorted in the 
form of the myth, the giving up of which pleasure affords the 
impulse to myth formation. From this viewpoint, it is clear that 
in the ultimate end there is nothing else to prosecute except 
psychology, analysis of phantasy life which manifests itself just 



32 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

as well in other forms. But the relation of mental content and 
processes to the phenomena of nature which is peculiar to the 
myth, perhaps characteristic of it, belongs in part to the pre- 
mythical period of " animistic view of the world," the considera- 
tion of which phenomena leads us back again to a psychological 
starting point for myth formation and myth investigation. If the 
mythology of the present-day may consider its task the tracing 
back of the mythical tales handed down in purely human dress 
(and the "myth" is nothing else than a "narrative") to the 
representation of processes of nature, as for instance it has " in- 
terpreted " the splendid sensual Song of Solomon as conversation 
between Christ and the Church, the task of the psychologists will 
remain just the reverse: to derive and comprehend from their 
psychological sources the phantasy products clothed in human 
dress even where they seem to transfer directly to other processes. 
This comes about by means of the knowledge of the processes 
of repression and substitute formation and the mental mech- 
anisms thereby involved as they have become known to us from 
the psychoanalytic study of human phantasy life. 

If one decides, in the manner indicated, to consider these 
dynamic factors as essential for the formation of myths, then 
one understands not only the early appearing need for an in- 
terpretation of the distorted and incomprehensible mythical 
product, but also the way by which one must seek this. If the 
myth is constituted as compensation for disowned psychic reali- 
ties and the justifiable projection of these upon superhuman gods 
and heroes to whom may still be permitted that which has become 
shocking to man, then the need of interpretation which rather 
belongs to the myth, will necessarily seek to substantiate and 
strengthen this defence. Thus, the interpretation will not apply 
itself to the underlying mental realities, but, on the contrary, to 
the phenomena of the external world which admit of a relation to 
the phantasy product which is only partially understood and re- 
fused by consciousness. That especially wonderful heroes and 
extraordinary men are suited to take upon themselves, in a cer- 
tain measure collectively, the impulses succumbing to the general 
repression and to carry them through as superhuman and heroic 
deeds, is indeed plain and will be sufficiently proven by the 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 33 

bearers of the mythical tales as well as by the deeds ascribed to 
them. Less evident seems the relation of humanly conceived 
myths and legends to the processes of nature and the heavenly 
bodies as the nature-mythological method of interpretation pre- 
sents them. Still, for the present, one needs only to retain as 
psychological justification for this conception that the phantasy- 
gifted man of ancient times also attributed to the inanimate phe- 
nomena of nature, amid which he stood with wondering incom- 
prehension, according as they were suitable, certain of his own 
affects and thus wove them into his own mental life. The 
process of nature, in itself, of course did not furnish him with 
a motive but only provided him with material for the phantasy 
formation, just as the dreamer often cleverly weaves into his 
dream picture external irritations. One may perhaps estimate 
the importance of the phenomena of nature for myth formation 
as psychoanalysis does the actual material from daily life for the 
dream picture resulting from unconscious motives. It is prob- 
able, that for the myth-creating man, the projection of the denied 
gratification upon deified heroes and humanized gods did not 
suffice but that he further, in anthropomorphical manner, drew 
into the myth formation the natural processes as representing the 
will of the gods. The circumstance that the finished myth 
permits this share to be recognized up to a certain degree of 
varying clearness seems to speak for the fact that even at the 
time when the myths were forming, the humanized conception of 
the processes of nature was co-determining. Apparently in the 
manner that the phenomena had already at an earlier period been 
personified in the service of self-preservation (fear) and by way 
of self-representation (projection of the ego upon the external 
world), at the time when man sought after external objects of 
representation for his repressed impulses, these were utilized as 
material for myth formation, while the instinctive force for both 
processes arose from the unconscious affect life. With this view 
corresponds the fact that the nature-mythological interpretation 
which is not to be disputed in its justification — namely, for the 
fixed mythical calendar dates — is always able to show in a purely 
descriptive way what processes of nature may correspond to 
definite mythical motives, but not to lead to the dynamic under- 



34 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

standing of the mental processes which guide to the anthropo- 
morphic apperception of external processes in general and further 
to the organization of these in the form of human narratives. 
When, in opposition to this view, the extreme representatives of 
the nature interpretation method hold firmly in unchangeable 
persistency to the belief that with the pointing out of atmospheric, 
lunar, astral and similar elements in the myth, which now and 
then can be read out of it only by means of artificial and alle- 
gorical juggling, the interpretation has been fully given, then 
there awakens beyond these statements a new interest for the 
psychologist. He gains the impression that the investigators 
who devote themselves to an exclusively nature-mythological 
method of interpretation — no matter in what sense — in their 
attempts to establish the meaning of the mythical tales, may find 
themselves in a position similar to that of the primitive creators 
of the myths in that they strive to disguise certain shocking 
motives by relation to nature, by projection of the offensiveness 
of these upon the external world and thus to deny the mental 
reality underlying the myth formation by the construction of an 
objective reality. This defence tendency has probably been one 
of the chief motives for the mythical projection of shocking 
thoughts upon cosmic processes and its possibility for reaction 
formation in the service of explanation of myths is naively con- 
sidered by the founders of the nature-mythological method of 
interpretation as an especial advantage of their method. Thus, 
Max Mtiller 13 avows that " by this method, not merely do mean- 
ingless saga attain a real significance and beauty but that one 
may thereby eliminate some of the most revolting traits of 
classical mythology and ascertain their true meaning." Against 
this naive confession, one is glad to recall the sharp words of 
Arnobius, who, as an adherent of early Christianity, had a 
personal interest in making out the heathen gods as coarse as 
possible and who therefore rejected the allegorical myth interpre- 
tations of his contemporaries (about 300 A. D.) with the fol- 
lowing words : " How far are you sure that you perceive and 
represent the same sense in the explanation and interpretation 
which those historians themselves had in their hidden thoughts, 

13 Essays (Vol. II, German Trans., Leipsic, 1869, p. 143). Similarly, 
Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 35 

which they have, however, represented not with the true expres- 
sions but in other words? There can be a second more sharp- 
sighted and more probable interpretation devised. . . . Since 
that is so, how can you derive something certain from ambiguous 
things and give a definite explanation to the word which you find 
conveyed by countless kinds of interpretation? For how will 
you know what part of the tale is composed in customary repre- 
sentation, what, on the contrary, is disguised by ambiguous and 
strange expressions, where the thing itself contains no mark 
which yields the distinction? Either everything must be con- 
sidered in allegorical fashion and so explained by us or nothing. 
. . . Formerly, it was customary to give allegorical speeches the 
modest meaning, to disguise dirty and ugly sounding things with 
the dress of proper nomenclature ; now should things be dressed 
in obscene and nasty fashion ! " These words written many 
centuries ago apply unchanged to certain excesses of modern 
nature-mythologists who, as for example, Siecke, explain the 
mythical motive of castration as representation of the waning of 
the moon, that of incest as a definite constellation of the moon 
to the sun. The psychoanalyst who knows the overdetermina- 
tion of all mental phenomena, is, a priori, clear concerning the 
share which a series of conscious factors of the mental life must 
necessarily have had in the myth formation and throughout does 
not deny the significance of the naive conception of nature for 
the formation of myths. How little the consideration of the 
unconscious instinctive forces excludes a consideration of the 
nature elements is best shown by the fact that the modern 
mythologists who devote themselves to comparative investigation 
agree in the essential points of the conception of myths with the 
results of the psychoanalytic investigation. Thus, Goldziher 14 
declares, although in the confused naivete of the nature mythol- 
ogy, that "the murder of parents and killing of children, fratri- 
cide and strife between brothers and sisters, sexual love and 
union between children and parents, between brothers and 
sisters, furnish the chief motives of the myth " ; and Stucken, 
Jeremias and others call direct incest and castration the "motive 
of antiquity " that occurs everywhere in mythology. While, 

14 Der Mythos bei den Hebraern (The Myth Among the Hebrews), 
Leipsic, 1876, p. 107. 



36 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

however, psychoanalysis is able to recognize as mental reality 
these impulses, the significance of which it has learned to ap- 
praise from the actual life of the infant and the unconscious 
mental life of the adult, the nature interpretation still clings to 
its denial of these impulses by projecting them upon heaven. 
On the other hand, clearsighted investigators have emphasized 
the secondary role of the nature interpretation 15 and a psycho- 
logically oriented mythologist like Wundt 16 denies the standpoint 
firmly held by many mythologists, of a heavenly origin for myths 
as a psychologically impossible idea, while he conceives the hero 
to be the projection of human wishes and hopes. 

It is the problem of psychoanalytic myth investigation to dis- 
close the unconscious meaning of the phantasies underlying the 
myths which have become unrecognizable by relation to processes 
of nature and other distortions. This comes about by means of 
our insight into the content and mechanisms of the unconscious 
mental life which we study most clearly in the dream, but can 
also show in other expressions (as religion, art, wit, etc.). We 
therewith expressly oppose the misunderstanding which ascribes 
to us the conception of the old " dream theory " which derives 
certain mythical motives directly from the dream experience. 
Rather, we have recognized dream and myth as parallel produc- 
tions of the same mental forces which produce also other crea- 
tions of phantasy. At the same time, it should be emphasized 
that dream and myth are in no way identical for us. Precisely 
the circumstance that the dream is not intended, a priori, for 
comprehension, while the myth speaks for generality, excludes 
an identification of that kind. The condition of comprehensi- 
bility makes it easy to understand the difference between the 
poetic structure of a legend and the seeming absurdity of a 

15 In this same direction, says Stucken (Mose, p. 432) : "The myth 
derived from experience was transferred to processes of nature and nat- 
uristically interpreted, not the reverse." " The nature interpretation itself 
is a myth" (page 633, footnote). Similarly, says Meyer (Gesch. d. Altert, 
Vol. V, p. 48) : " In numerous cases is the nature symbolism sought in the 
myths only apparently at hand or introduced into them secondarily, as 
very often, in the Vedic and Egyptian myths, it is a primitive attempt at 
interpretation, the same as the myth interpretations appearing among the 
Greeks since the fifth century." 

16 Volkerpsychologie, Vol. II, Part 3, p. 282. 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 37 

dream picture by taking into consideration the especially inten- 
sive share of those mental forces to which Freud ascribes the 
" secondary elaboration " of the dream content by the conscious 
mental forces. Therewith, the myths, without withdrawing 
entirely from the inner structure of the dream, approach better- 
known mental structures which assume, as it were — as the name 
indicates- — a middle position between the dream and those con- 
scious forces : namely, the day-dream. The ambitious and erotic 
phantasies of boyhood and puberty return in the myth structure 
as content of a series of similar tales which are many times inde- 
pendent of one another. Thus for example, the myth of the 
exposure of the newborn hero in a little basket in water, his 
rescue and nursing by poor people and his ultimate victory over 
his persecutor (usually the father) is familiar to us as an 
ambitious phantasy of boyhood lined by erotic wishes which 
recurs in the " family romance " of the neurotic and discloses 
itself in many relations with the pathological ideas of persecution 
and grandeur of certain insane persons. When we are able to 
interpret the exposure in basket and water, on a basis of our 
knowledge of symbolism, as representation of birth, then we 
have in hand the understanding of the saga and at the same 
time the key to the discovery of its secret instinctive force and 
tendency. Thereby is disclosed the fact that symbolization 
serves, in general, to carry out in disguised representation the 
wish-impulses existing under the pressure of the repression ; this 
symbolization can no longer be shocking to consciousness and 
yet affords the affects pressing from the unconscious for ex- 
pression an almost equal substitute gratification. This is the 
most general formulation under which the mechanisms of un- 
conscious phantasy formation and thus, also, those of myth crea- 
tion, can be arranged. They serve, generally speaking, for the 
retention and distorted attainment of the mental pleasure that is 
destined for renunciation; on the other hand, for recognition of 
the material clothed in the wish, that is, really the denial of the 
unpleasant and painful experience which is demanded of man by 
reality. The result of both these strivings, which represent the 
fundamental tendencies of the mind, may be comprised under 
the viewpoint of wishfulfillment which utilizes these mechanisms 



3 8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

as compensation for denied gratification or for the avoidance of 
compulsory renunciation in ever new and more refined dis- 
guises which we will shortly present in detail. 

The mechanism of splitting of the personality into several 
figures representing its characteristics, also recognized in the 
dream life, recurs again in the form of the hero myth where 
the rebellious son gratifies his hostile impulses which belong 
against the father, on a tyrant who represents the hated side of 
the father-image (Vaterimago) while consideration is given to 
the cultural demands of piety by superlative acknowledgment of a 
beloved, revered, indeed even defended or avenged father-image. 
To this splitting of the mythical figures, there correspond openly 
in the hero himself, from whose standpoint the myth seems to be 
formed, similar " ambivalent " attitudes toward the persons in 
question, so that in the latest psychological solution, this mech- 
anism is reduced to what we might call a paranoid explanation of 
the matter contained in the mind and its projection upon the 
mythical figures. A whole series of complicated myths which 
are provided with a great array of persons may be traced back 
to the three-cornered family of parents and child and in ultimate 
analysis, may be recognized as a representation disguised in 
justifying manner of the egocentric attitude of the child. 

From the splitting, which is a means of representation 
founded on the very nature of the myth-forming phantasy activi- 
ties, should be distinguished the similar mechanism of duplication 
of whole mythical figures (not merely isolated impulses split off 
from these), which is already recognized by certain modern 
mythologists (Winckler, Stucken, Husing and others) and may 
be traced through the whole history of myths and legends. 
Further, the psychoanalytic penetration into the saga structure 
here affords us insight into the purpose of this mechanism as a 
means of wishfulfillment and gratification of instinct, which can 
never take place in reality on the original wish object, but only 
after corresponding compensations in the sense of a continued 
series. Just as many dreams seek to fulfill as adequately as 
possible always the same wish-motive in a series of successive 
situations in different disguise and distortion, so the myth also 
repeats one and the same mental constellation until it is exhausted 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 39 

to a certain extent in all its wish tendencies. The case of 
duplication exists, for example, in a series of traditions which 
wish to portray»the tabooed incest with mother, daughter or sister 
by duplication of the male or female partner. Examples of 
duplication of the male partner are afforded by the numerous 
legends and saga in which a king in full consciousness of his 
sin, wishes to marry his own daughter, who escapes from him, 
however, by flight and, after manifold adventures, marries a 
king in whom one easily recognizes again a double of the orig- 
inally rejected father. A classical example of duplication of the 
female partner for the purpose of accomplishing incest is pre- 
sented in the Lohengrin saga, in the first part of which the son 
saves the beloved mother from the violence of the cruel father, 
the succeeding marriage with the rescued one is accomplished 
only in the second part after the whole saving episode has been 
played again with a strange lady, a double of the mother. 

These and many similar examples show that the duplication, 
often the multiplication, of individual mythical figures proceeds 
as a rule along with the duplication and multiplication of whole 
saga episodes which one has to bring to the covering, one might 
say to the condensation, which originally happened to them in 
the unconscious phantasy life. Thus with the splitting, duplica- 
tion, symbolic disguising and projection of these mental elements, 
the shocking, somewhat incestuous content of the tale is obliter- 
ated in the direction of the repressing tendency, at the same time, 
however, the original tendency toward gratification is retained 
in the disguised form. 

With these processes which become ever more complicated in 
the course of the progress of the repression, there appears also 
a gradual displacement of the affective accent from the originally 
important upon the unimportant, even to full inversion of affect 
or content of ideas as we know it from the dream structure. 
This is a necessary result of the incomprehensibility of the myths 
connected with the progress of the repression, upon which must 
always be put some kind of a conscious interpretation even if an 
incorrect one. 

The mental distortion of motives and mechanisms mentioned 
affords the mythologist as well as the investigator who is ac- 



4° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

customed to fortifying himself with mythological material, help- 
ful hints that in the estimation of this material, more foresight is 
demanded than the comparative myth investigation already 
rightly exacts and that still other factors, more influential and 
more difficult to understand than the historical foundations and 
the external fates of the mythical traditions, demand considera- 
tion. As the scientific investigator of to-day no longer utilizes 
any mythical product without bearing in mind the viewpoints of 
comparative investigation, so a demand for scientific certainty will 
insist that no myth be employed for indisputable demonstration 
which cannot also be considered as interpreted psychologically. 

The myths, however, are not to be understood psychologically 
only by solution of the disguising symbolism and the representa- 
tion of opposites, by the elimination of the splitting and duplica- 
tion, by the tracing back of the arrangement and projection to the 
egocentric attitude of the unconscious which is shocking to con- 
sciousness. There is yet another factor to consider — aside from 
the mentioned dissection of myths lengthwise and crosswise — 
there is also a stratification in the dimension of depth which is 
peculiar to the myth in still higher degree than for example to the 
dream. Indeed, the myth is no individual product like the dream 
nor yet, as you might say, a fixed one like the work of art. 
Rather, the myth structure is constantly fluid, never completed, 
and is adapted by successive generations to their religious, cul- 
tural and ethical standards, that is, psychologically expressed, to 
the current stage of repression. This stratification according to 
generations may still be recognized to a large extent in certain 
formal peculiarities of the myth formation, wherein especially 
shocking outrages, which were originally ascribed only to the 
perpetrator of the mythical events, are gradually shared, in vari- 
ously weaker form within the tale itself, with his ancestors and 
descendants or are represented in separate versions of the myth. 

As originators, propagators and decorators of the so-called 
folk productions, we must think of solitary talented individuals 
on whom the progress of repression manifested itself most plainly 
and probably also earlier. Hence, the narrative, in course of its 
formation, apparently goes through a series of similarly con- 
stituted individual minds, among which, each worked, often for 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 4* 

a generation, in the same direction in the assertion of the general 
human motive and the rubbing off of many a disturbing acces- 
sory. In this way, it becomes possible in long periods of time 
and under changed conditions of culture, that late versions and 
those adapted in their whole plan to the degree of culture, ap- 
proach in individual points the unconscious meaning of the tale. 
How, on the other hand, the original religious myths established 
with real credibility, gradually lost their claim to earnest esteem 
in enlightened ages and finally lost it entirely, is shown plainly 
enough by the history of the Greek, Vedic and Eddaic tradi- 
tions. With the real depreciation of the myth, there must, how- 
ever, proceed also, since its mental reality in higher stages of 
culture can be still less acknowledged, a psychological deprecia- 
tion : it is pushed out of the field of socially valuable function 
into the domain of fable, and since, as already pointed out, the 
share of the unconscious phantasy life gradually breaks through 
again more plainly, so the myth which can be excluded from the 
world just as little as the myth forming agencies can be from 
the mental life, can reappear at a certain stage of culture as 
legend, and be relegated by the highly developed people of civili- 
zation with condescending superiority to the nursery where 
indeed, in a deep sense, as a regression product, it belongs and 
where alone it can be really understood. It is like the case of 
primitive weapons, for example, bows and arrows, which were 
replaced with other corresponding ones by civilized people, living 
on in the nursery as playthings. Just as little as these weapons 
were created for children, so with the legend, as the scientific 
investigation long ago made certain ; bows and arrows are kept 
by a number of peoples even to the present day ; the legend may 
rather represent a sunken form of myth as the comparative in- 
vestigation indicates. Psychologically considered, it is the last 
form in which the mythical product is admissible to the conscious- 
ness of adult cultured people. To the child with a gift for 
phantasy and filled with primitive affects, the legend, however, 
appears as objective reality because he stands in close relation to 
the time in which he must believe in the mental reality of his 
own similar impulses. The adults, on the other hand, already 
know that it is " only a legend," that is, a phantasy product. As 



42 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the legend thus leads us back to a psychological starting point 
for myth investigation, so at the same time, it discloses to us the 
human starting point of myth formation, because it reduces the 
gods and heroes to earthly proportions and causes them to play 
their humanized fates in the setting of the family. With this 
complete elaboration of the purely human characteristics under- 
lying the myth, the legend has prepared itself for the psycho- 
logical conception and interpretation and will be welcomed in the 
analysis of the myth as a valuable aid, which not only enlarges 
the mythical material but often affords a confirmation of the con- 
clusions drawn therefrom. The simple myth affords the ma- 
terial in relatively raw condition because it can relate to super- 
human relations ; the complicated legend reduces it to human pro- 
portions but in greatly distorted, in part ethically reduced form. 
Both forms considered as supplementary yield a complete under- 
standing in the sense of the psychoanalytic conception which 
shows the motive that is shocking to our sensibilities, as a com- 
mon human impulse among primitive peoples and present in the 
unconscious mental life of adult cultured persons and acknowl- 
edges its psychic reality. 

In order to explain the application of the fundamental prin- 
ciples methodically arranged, we will select as an example a 
widespread group of traditions, within which, the results of the 
psychoanalytic interpretation work may be substantiated by com- 
parative legend investigation from the mythological standpoint. 
It concerns the romance of the two brothers which appears 
among various peoples of ancient and modern times in manifold 
forms ; from the highly complicated version in Grimm's legends 
(No. 60), we will sift out the kernel of the tale in order to trace 
it back to the underlying basic psychological instinctive roots. 
In so doing, we will gain immediate insight, by comparison with 
less distorted or differently disguised versions of the story, into 
the proven mechanisms of myth formation. 

In abbreviated form, the Grimm's legend runs as follows : 
There were two brothers, one rich and bad, the other, poor and 
upright; the latter has two children who were twin brothers and 
were as near alike as two drops of water. Their father once 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 43 

had the good fortune to stumble on a golden bird, for the feathers 
and eggs of which the rich brother pays well and by the enjoy- 
ment of the heart and liver of which he wishes to attain the 
attribute of laying gold. The costly morsels were, however, 
eaten unsuspectingly by the two hungry twin brothers, from 
which, each one now finds a gold piece under his pillow every 
morning. At the instigation of the envious uncle, the boys are 
exposed by their father in the forest. 

There, a hunter finds them, brings them up and instructs them 
in woodwork; when they are grown up, he sends them into the 
world richly endowed. He accompanies them a little ways and, 
on parting, gives them a bright knife, saying : " When you sepa- 
rate from each other, stick this knife in a tree at the parting of 
the ways, then the one who returns can see how it has fared with 
his brother, for the side toward which this is pulled out, rusts 
when he dies; so long as he lives, it remains bright." The 
brothers come to a great wood where they are compelled by 
hunger to hunt to acquire, by the forbearance of the sympathetic 
game, a few helpful animals. Finally, however, they have to 
separate, "promise brotherly love until death and stick the knife 
which the foster father gave them, into a tree; then one goes 
toward the east, the other toward the west." 

" The youngest, 17 however, came with his animals to a city 
which was entirely draped in black cloth." The reason for this 
he learned from an innkeeper to be that annually a pure virgin 
must be offered to a dragon which lived in front of the town and 
there was no one left except the king's daughter who, on the 
morrow, must meet the ignominious fate. Many knights had 
already attempted to match the dragon but all had lost their lives 
and the king had promised to the one who should conquer the 
dragon, his daughter as wife and the kingdom as inheritance. 
The next morning, the youth climbed the dragon's mountain, finds 
there in a chapel the power-giving drink which enables him to 
swing the mighty sword buried on the threshold and thus awaits 
the arrival of the monster. Then comes the virgin with a great 
retinue. " She saw from afar the hunter above on the dragon's 
mountain and thought the dragon stood there waiting for her, 

17 Literal, in spite of the fact that they are twin brothers 



44 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

and she would not go up." Finally, however, she had to ap- 
proach the hard way. The king and courtiers went home and 
only the marshal was to witness everything from a distance. 
The hunter receives her kindly, consoles her, promises to save 
her and shuts her in the church. Soon after, the seven-headed 
dragon comes forth and calls the hunter to account. A struggle 
ensues, in which the youth strikes off six heads of the fire-spitting 
monster with two strokes (hydra motive) . " The monster became 
faint and sank down and wished to be free again from the 
hunter but the latter, with his last strength, cut off his tail and 
because he could not fight longer he called his animals which tore 
it to pieces. When the battle was over, the hunter opened the 
church and found the king's daughter lying on the ground, be- 
cause her senses had left her during the combat from anxiety 
and horror" (death sleep). When she came to herself he told 
her that she was saved. She rejoiced and said : " Now you will 
be my beloved husband." Her coral necklace she divided among 
the animals as a reward, " her pocket handkerchief however, in 
which her name stood, she gave to the hunter who went out and 
cut the tongues from the seven dragon heads, wrapped them in 
the cloth and carefully kept them." 

The knight, weakened from the struggle, now lies down with 
the virgin to rest ; the animals also soon all fall asleep after one 
had committed the watch to another. When the marshal, after 
he had waited awhile, came to look and found all asleep, he cut 
off the hunter's head, carried the virgin down the mountain in 
his arms and compelled her to promise to declare him the slayer 
of the dragon. She stipulated with her father the favor that the 
wedding should not be celebrated until a year and a day had 
passed ; " for she thought in that time to hear something of her 
beloved hunter." On the dragon's mountain, in the meantime, 
the animals had awakened, saw that the virgin was gone and 
their master dead and blamed one another until finally it stuck 
on the hare. The latter withdrew from the strife and within 
twenty-four hours found a root which brought the master to life 
again. But in the haste, the head was put on reversed, " but he 
did not notice it, however, because of his sad thoughts about the 
king's daughter; only at midday when he wished to eat some- 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 45 

thing, did he see that his head was on backwards, could not 
understand it and asked the animals what had occurred to him 
during sleep?" Now, they had to admit everything, the head 
was again put on correctly and the hunter went sadly forth into 
the world with his animals. 

After the course of a year, he comes again to the same city 
but this time on account of the marriage festival of the king's 
daughter, it was decorated in red. The hunter sent a message to 
the bride by his animals, at which, the king was surprised and 
sent for the owner. He entered as the seven dragon heads were 
placed on exhibition and brought the pretended dragon killer into 
difficulties by asking after the missing tongues ; upon the latter's 
evasion, by producing these trophies of victory as well as the 
handkerchief and the coral necklace, he proves himself the suitor 
for the hand of the princess. The faithless marshal was quar- 
tered, the king's daughter was given to the hunter and the latter 
named lieutenant governor of the kingdom. " The young king 
had his father and foster father brought and loaded them with 
treasures. The innkeeper too he did not forget." 18 The young 
king lives contentedly with his wife and goes hunting accom- 
panied by his animals. Once, while hunting a white doe in a 
neighboring magic forest, he lost his companions, finally the 
game and way both and must pass the night in the wood. A 
witch comes to him, who, under pretext of fearing his animals, 
throws a wand at him, by the touch of which, the animals and 
then the king himself are turned into stone (death sleep). 

At this time, the other brother who thus far had wandered 
about with his animals without service, comes into the kingdom, 
looks at the knife in the tree trunk and recognizes from that, 
that a great misfortune has befallen his brother, but that he may 
still save him. In the city, on account of the great likeness, he 
is taken for the missing king and joyfully received by the 
anxious queen as the missing husband. He plays the role in the 
hope of being able to save the brother quicker ; only evenings 
when he is brought to the royal bed, he lays a two-edged sword 
between himself and the young queen who does not venture to 
ask the meaning of this unusual ceremony (abstinence motive). 

18 In striking manner, however, the brother altogether. 



46 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

After some days, he goes to the magic forest, everything 
happens to him as to the brother, only he knows how to meet the 
old witch rightly and compels her to bring to life his brother and 
his animals (reincarnation). The twin brothers hereupon burn 
the witch, embrace each other joyfully and recount their experi- 
ences. When, however, the one learns that the brother has slept 
beside the queen, he strikes off his head in a fit of jealousy but 
is immediately sorry to have so rewarded his savior. Again, the 
hare brings the life root, with the help of which the dead is 
brought to life and the wound healed. 

Hereupon, the brothers separate again but decide to enter the 
city at the same time from different sides. The old king asks his 
daughter which is the real husband, but she cannot at first recog- 
nize him ; only the coral necklace which she had given to his 
animals gives her the right clue. At evening, when the young 
king goes to bed, his wife asks him why, in the previous nights, 
he has always laid a two-edged sword in bed. " Then he recog- 
nized how true his brother had been." 

If the naive hearer is asked the meaning of this legend, he 
will without much thought declare the representation of noble 
self-sacrificing brotherly love as the purpose of the narrative. 
It cannot, however, escape him that this chief content is joined to 
a series of adventures which stand in more or less loose con- 
nection, that further, the simple moral of the story is set in the 
scene with a disproportionately complicated apparatus and that 
finally, the fairly thick moral coat itself is pierced in more than 
one place by an ethical unscrupulousness, such as otherwise char- 
acterizes the legend as a product of antiquity and childhood. If 
one would now look at some of these peculiarities, such as the 
decking out with wonderful traits, the frequent repetition of 
detail, the fusion of different motives, etc., as meaningless results 
of that day-dreaming pleasure of fabulating which has a certain 
share in the spreading of the legendary material, still there always 
remains a series of typical basic motives which demonstrably 
arise from mythical times where the narrative often enough had 
a quite different sense and a purpose, foreign to us. In its 
present form, the legend is not original and further not a unit, 
hence it can also never be interpreted in its entirety, as sentence 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 47 

for sentence traced back to its unconscious meaning; rather, it 
has become what it is from compulsion of circumstances and the 
tracing back of its course of development will also earliest afford 
us conclusion regarding its real meaning and the reason for this 
change in significance to which it has been subjected in the 
course of time. Because of this manifold complication of the 
mythical structure handed down to us, we can always undertake 
an interpretation only of individual motives and must therefore 
dissect the product in hand just as we do a dream for interpreta- 
tion, into individual elements which are at first to be treated inde- 
pendently ; to this, the comparative investigation affords us the 
quasi-associations which the myth-forming whole has contributed 
to the individual themes in course of their elaboration. 

In the foregoing legend, one easily distinguishes a narrative 
forced into the center of things : the liberation and marriage of 
a virgin destined for sacrifice to a monster, by a clever youth 
(savior motive) ; before this, a previous history, and after it, 
a related conclusion, both of which surrounding parts contain the 
real brother motive. 

The previous history of the twin brothers exposed by their 
father (exposure motive) has itself an introduction in a report 
of two entirely different brothers of the preceding generation, in 
which may be seen duplications of the real twin heroes carried 
out as a favorite decorative tendency. Deeper analysis reveals 
in them, however, according to the familiar scheme of the myth 
of the birth of the hero, splittings of the father image, by which 
the " bad father " is made responsible for the exposure, while the 
" good father " permits 19 it, though unwillingly, and appears again 
in course of the tale, as the helping hunter who lovingly rears the 
boys, but then likewise sends them forth into the world (ex- 
posure motive). The beginning of the legend would thus prove 
in direct and undisguised representation that a father, after he 

19 With the motive of "gold laying" introduced at the foundation of 
the exposure from a foreign connection, we have nothing further to do 
here. In a certain closely related sense, the gold-giving bird represents 
both the father and the attribute of gold distributing among the sons for 
their material independence. 



48 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

has lovingly reared and prepared his children for the world, 
pushes them out of the parental home. 20 

With this actual exposure of the sons 21 to the rough reality of 
life, begins the real previous history of the hero's adventures: 
namely, the necessary separation of the brothers (separation mo- 
tive) and the mutual vows of faithfulness over the sign of the 
shining knife, which motive will only later become clear in its 
significance. 

There follows, now, an especial elaboration of the whole inde- 
pendent motive of dragon combat and the freeing of a virgin, 
which we recognize as typical constituents of the mythology of 
various peoples. We may, therefore, without reference to the 
brother motive, consider, so much the earlier since the brother 
does not appear at all there, the savior episode, in order to make 
us familiar with some of the peculiarities of myth formation. If 
one reads the detailed description of the sacrifice of the virgin in 
the legend, with a certain inclination toward psychological under- 
standing, then it is difficult to mistake the purely human content. 
The decoration of the city, the gay pageant which accompanies 
the pure virgin to the chapel and leaves her there to her inevitable 
fate, all that agrees so well, as if it referred in secret to the 
wedding of the princess who is anxious in maidenly fear of her 

20 In the beginning of the legend, the ancient motive has found direct 
presentation in the exposure of the children by their father; in the rela- 
tion to their good foster father, it seems already inverted into its opposite, 
since the two brothers refuse the acceptance of food and drink until the 
hunter allows them departure into the world : Then spoke the old man 
with joy, "what is happening to you has been my own wish." 

21 The secret meaning of the exposure we may leave out of consid- 
eration here, where the birth of the hero may not be followed further; we 
ma} r point out, however, that other versions of this widespread legend 
contain the typical exposure of the boys conceived by the drinking from 
an enchanted spring, preserved in chest and water and, further, that the 
helpful animals of the hero myth recur in our legend, and here as there, 
represent important representatives of the helpful parent images, who 
were spared by the child in pious manner after they have provided two 
young ones (twin motive) for the assistance of the heroes. To the 
watery birth point the names of the boys, who are sometimes called Water 
Peter and Water Paul, sometimes John and Caspar, sprung from the water, 
Wattuman and Wattusin, strong spring and lovely spring. As reverbera- 
tion from this, is to be noticed the reference in our legend that the two 
nameless boys resembled each other " like two drops of water." 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 49 

future husband and sees in him, in expectation of impending 
mysterious events, only a monster that has aimed at her destruc- 
tion. That this conception has not been entirely foreign to the 
legend itself is betrayed by the place where the princess when 
she " saw the hunter from afar above on the dragon's mountain, 
thought the dragon was standing there awaiting her and she 
would not ascend." Thus, she identified the dragon directly with 
her later bridegroom and husband, though of course, only in 
transient and erroneous fashion, from which, however, we may 
read the echo of a deeper psychological significance of the motive. 
We can prove this view, however, directly from parallel traditions 
which utilize the same motive in the sense of our interpretation. 
In the old popular Milesian legend, which the Roman poet 
Apuleius has handed down under the title " Eros and Psyche," 
the oracle commands the royal father of Psyche to conduct his 
daughter with full wedding pomp and festal train to the top of 
the mountain and there to leave her to the son-in-law sprung 
from the dragon-race ; " so Psyche attends in tears not her 
wedding but her funeral celebration " (also in our legend, the 
city was dressed in black). 22 But here, too, the virgin did not 
fall to the expected dreadful dragon, which did not show itself 
at all, but becomes the wife of Eros, the god of love himself, 
who visits her every night as an invisible husband until the in- 
quisitive Psyche, goaded by her sisters, one night convinces her- 
self against the command of her beloved that, instead of the 
pretended monster, a handsome youth rests by her side who now 
leaves her as punishment. This legend shows with all desired 
clearness that, in the offering of the untouched virgin to the 
horrible dragon, we are dealing with a wedding which is hal- 
lucinated by the anxious virgin in unmistakable neurotic fashion 
as awful overpowering by a horrible monster. Thus, if the 
dragon represents in one stratum of the interpretation the feared 
and detested animal side of the husband, then there can be no 
doubt that it is the sexual side of the man which has first found 
expression in the dragon symbol. That to this dragon, here as 

22 The affixed death motive naturally has its own significance which, 
nevertheless, must be passed over in this connection. It finds partial ex- 
planation in the later mentioned motive of reincarnation. 



5° SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

in other myths, in course of time, all the pure virgins of the land 
must be sacrificed, makes us all the more sure of its phallic 
significance; that it has other meanings besides, indeed must 
have, since this one discloses the sense of the legend only a 
little way, we shall have to show in other layers of the interpreta- 
tion ; nevertheless, we may even now assert that these different 
meanings (and also other meanings) do not in the least exclude 
one another, but rather, to a certain extent, converge toward one 
point. That the virginal anxiety preceding the carrying out of 
the sexual intercourse rules the dragon episode in this plain in- 
terpretation is shown also by the conclusion of the scene, which 
does not, as one would expect, end with the actual marriage, but 
with a one-year abstinence, which the bride stipulates or to which 
in many traditions the hero voluntarily agrees (motive of absti- 
nence) . Only after the expiration of this time does the wedding 
take place, which should logically, as in the legend of Eros and 
Psyche, follow immediately, so that it gains the appearance that 
the pleasantly and unpleasantly toned attitudes toward the sexual 
act were so unbearably opposed to each other here that they 
must be placed in two temporally separated scenes, which other- 
wise seem joined. The deeper significance of this character- 
istic, as well as of the whole interpolated episode of the faithless 
marshal, can only become intelligible when we have traced back 
to its unconscious foundations the real brother motive, to the 
analysis of which we will now apply ourselves. 

The final, especially contradictory part of the legend, with 
the fratricide so grossly opposing the tendency of the tale, most 
needs explanation, but promises also to lead deepest into the 
underlying mental strata. Before we proceed to prove this by 
comparison with less distorted versions of the same motive, we 
will seek to determine how much nearer the application of our 
fundamental principles to the material at hand brings us to the 
meaning of the narrative. In the conjugal substitution of one 
brother by the other, as well as in the jealous murder of the rival 
brother resulting therefrom, we recognize, in spite of sentimental 
amelioration which these motives have here undergone, primi- 
tive traits of primeval love and mental life, the grossness of 
which is artificially hidden by the " good ending " of the story. 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 5 1 

The evil reward, which is apportioned to the savior for the 
rescue of the brother, lets us suspect that originally it must have 
dealt with an actually hostile relationship between the brothers 
throughout and a more fundamental jealousy. If we do not 
dodge recognizing the fact that these powerful affects of jealous 
brotherly hatred and the necessary renunciation of its satis- 
faction is, in reality, one of the instinctive forces of legend forma- 
tion, then, both the dragon combat, as well as the concluding 
episode of the faithless marshal, becomes clear, at the same time 
as the still further distorted duplication of the same primeval 
motive, which succeeded in breaking through in sentimental 
amelioration in the concluding episode. In all three scenes, we 
are dealing with the elimination of an opponent who seeks to 
rob the victorious brother of his life and bride in order to assume 
his place in the conjugal bed. If, however, the wicked dragon, 
as well as the wicked marshal, represents a personification of the 
hated brother image, which arouses sexual jealousy, then we 
understand also why the beloved brother image separated from 
the fraternal companion (separation motive) before the dragon 
combat and does not appear in the next two episodes : namely, it 
is represented by the two substitute figures of the dragon and the 
marshal, in whose killing the brother is also eliminated. There- 
fore, the young king, in his new happiness, allows all his relatives 
and even the innkeeper to come and rewards them, while the 
slain " brother " is consequently not mentioned. That the faith- 
less marshal personifies the hated side of the " loyal " brother is 
hinted at in the circumstance that both persons were brought into 
the same situations toward the successful brother, as, for ex- 
ample, in the duplicated recognition scene, where the hero, as 
possessor of the necklace, is proven the rightful husband both 
against the marshal and the brother. That the dragon should 
also represent the brother to be combated is nothing strange. 
We recognize a similar relation, for example, in the Siegfried 
saga, where the hero, at the instigation of his foster father, 
Regin, kills his brother, who is watching the treasure in the form 
of a dragon, and in further course of events, likewise wins for 
himself the virgin. Other relations of the Siegfried saga to our 
legend will be mentioned later. Striking only is the threefold 



52 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

repetition of one and the same fundamental situation which 
varies — as in many dreams — in ever plainer representation of the 
opponent (dragon, marshal, brother), the motive of rivalry with 
the brother for the possession of the same wife and the elimina- 
tion of the rival. 

How much this motive originally stood in the central point of 
the narrative is plainly shown by another, in many points less dis- 
torted version of the same legend, which will also disclose to us 
the meaning of certain hitherto uninterpreted motives. This is 
the so-called oldest legend of world literature, which was fixed in 
literary form some 2,000 years ago, in the 'Egyptian story of the 
brothers Anup and Bata. " Now Anup had a house and a wife, 
while his younger brother lived with him like a son." One day, 
the elder brother's wife attempted to seduce her young brother- 
in-law. The latter, however, indignantly repulsed her without 
saying anything about it to his brother. She now slandered 
Bata by saying that he had done violence to her. " Then the 
elder brother became enraged like a panther, sharpened his knife 
and took it in hand " to kill his younger brother when he should 
come home at evening. The latter, however, was warned by the 
animals of his herd (motive of helpful animals) 23 and fled. 
" His elder brother ran after him with the knife in his hand." 
The younger brother appealed to Re; the god heard him and 
caused a great water to arise between them, on the shores of 
which, they pass the night separately. When the sun rises, Bata 
defends himself before its face, tells Anup the base proposals of 
his wife, swears his innocence and castrates himself as a sign of 
his purity. " He hereupon drew forth a sharp knife, cut off 
his phallus and threw it into the flood where it was swallowed 
by a fish." When Anup, now full of remorse, began to weep, 
Bata begged a favor. " I will take my heart and lay it on the 
flower of the cedar tree and when anyone shall give you a glass 
of beer and it foams, then it will be the time for you to come and 
search for my heart ! " (motive of true love). Anup went home, 
killed his wife and threw her body to the dogs ; then he sat down, 
put dust on his head and mourned for his brother. 

23 The cow, which warns him first, represents the repentant wife her- 
self, as in general, most animals of the legend in the figure of helpful or 
harmful beings, represent closely associated people. 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 53 

Meanwhile the latter lives in a cedar valley. The gods praise 
his chastity and give him a wish. He asks for a maiden and 
they jointly create one for him. He lives with her and confides 
to her the secret of the heart in the cedar blossoms. But her 
lighter mind, her curiosity and lustfulness cause her to disobey 
the only prohibition of her husband : she comes near the sea, the 
waves snatch off a curl which floats to the laundry of the king of 
Egypt. The king has the possessor sought out, finally makes her 
his wife and in order to avoid Bata's revenge, at her wish, has 
the cedar cut down. 

Bata drops down dead (death sleep). His brother notices 
the misfortune as was predicted, on the foam of his beer and 
hastens into the cedar valley. Three years he searches for the 
heart ; in the fourth, he finally finds it and gives a drink to the 
dead Bata. Then the latter awakens and embraces his brother 
(reincarnation). 

Then Bata changes into an Apis bull and has himsellf driven 
by his brother to the court of the king of Egypt. The bull allows 
himself to be recognized by the queen as Bata. The queen is 
frightened and brings it about in an hour of love that the king 
has the bull slain. Two drops of blood fall to the ground at the 
gate of the palace; two giant sycamores shoot up in a night 
(hydra motive). Again Bata allows himself to be recognized in 
them, again the queen brings about the cutting down of the 
trees. While this is being done, a splinter flies into her mouth, 
she becomes impregnated and bears Bata as her son (rebirth 
motive). The king dies, Bata becomes his heir and has the 
queen executed. After a thirty-years rule, dying, he leaves the 
crown to his brother Anup. 

Before we investigate the individual motives in their rela- 
tionship to the German brother legend, we will first seek to 
comprehend the whole content and structure of this noteworthy 
story, of which H. Schneider 24 says: "If one overlooks an his- 
torical or mythological nucleus and considers the story entirely 
isolated and for itself alone, then one may be tempted, at first, 
to see in it nothing except an external union of heterogeneous 
elements, a phantasy play of fleeting ideas. All unity and logic 

24 Kultur und Denken der alten Agypter, 2d ed., Leipsic, 1909, p. 257. 



54 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

seems lacking. . . . The figures change as in the dream . . . the 
stage is likewise indistinct . . . nevertheless, toward the poetic 
work, I am never free from the feeling of the most complete 
inner unity, most complete artistic control, most complete logical 
development. Only, unity and necessity do not lie in the gay 
pictures themselves but behind these." If we attempt, by means 
of our psychoanalytic basic principles, to derive this hidden 
meaning of the narrative, we recognize first in the different 
episodes of the Egyptian tale, likewise duplications of the one 
fundamental situation, the less disguised representation of which, 
in distinction from the German legend, here precedes, while the 
distorted variations finally carry out the longed for gratification 
of the tabooed wish. Thus, the king of the second part reveals 
himself as a socially elevated double of the elder brother, and the 
wicked queen is an equally plain double of the wicked wife of 
Anup, so that Schneider comes to the conclusion : " These two 
women are precisely one person" (p. 260). And, as in the 
German legend, the hated brother appears in continually new 
figures as dragon, marshal and finally in his real role, so also 
does Bata appear as bull, tree and finally in human form, as 
rebirth of himself, being brought forth by the mother as his own 
son. His nominal father would then be the king, in whom we 
recognize a double of the elder brother, who, according to the 
wording of the legend, really represents the father's place. Thus 
Bata strives from the beginning to seduce the " mother," whom 
he, in the second part, ever pursues in symbolical disguise, which 
plainly betrays that the slander by her at the beginning of the 
narrative is to be considered only as a projection of his incestuous 
wish. If the Egyptian version thus disguises the ground for the 
bitter rivalry of the brothers as inclination toward the same 
irreplaceable incestuous object, 25 it recognizes also the corre- 

25 In an Albanian legend, which deals with the liberation of a king's 
daughter sacrificed to a monster (Lubia) (corresponding to the dragon 
combat of the German legend) the story runs, that the hero has saved 
his own mother (saving phantasy) and taken her to wife, while he acci- 
dentally kills the king, her father (= monster), and enters upon his inheri- 
tance (Hahn, Griech. u. alb. Marchen, Leipsic, 1864, No. 98). Here it 
may be pointed out that the heroes of the Greek saga, Perseus, Apollo, 
Bellerophon and others, always kill a monster (Gorgon, Minotaurus, etc.) 
as the sphinx-killer, Gidipus, his father. 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 55 

sponding punishment for the forbidden realization of this desire : 
the castration. That this was originally caused by the jealous 
rival (brother, father) and not in a kind of confession of the 
forbidden wish, by his own hand, is shown, not only by the com- 
parative myth accounts, but also by the Egyptian legend itself, 
even if only in disguised and diminished form. From Bata, 
changed into an Apis bull, the symbol of masculine virility, the 
head is struck off at the command of the king and the sycamores, 
springing up from the drops of blood gifted with power of 
wonderful growth, the splinters from which have the power of 
masculine fructification, are likewise inexorably cut down. In 
both motives, because of numerous individual psychological ex- 
periences and mythological parallels, we must see symbolical 
representations of the castration, undertaken in the first part, 
which is the original vengeance of a jealous rival. Especially is 
the cutting off of the head, which here next interests us, already 
recognizable in an external detail, as substitute for castration, 
namely, in the fruitful drops of blood which elsewhere regularly 
flow from the severed phallus. 2S If however, the beheading of 
the Apis bull by the king is a symbolical (disguised) expression 
of the castration carried out on a rival, so we may also introduce 
this meaning into the German legend, and find, accordingly, that 
the young king struck off the brother's head when he received 
the information of the latter's taking his place in the conjugal 

26 Thus, at the castration of Uranus, arises Aphrodite, like Bata's 
" artificial " god-maiden. Plain echoes of the Egyptian legend are shown 
in the tale of the hermaphrodite, Agdistis, at whose castration there sprang 
from his blood a pomegranate tree (== new phallus) ; the fruits of this 
stick Nana in her breast, from which she becomes pregnant and bears 
Attis, who is later made mad by his jealous mother and castrates himself 
under a pine tree (like Bata). From the blood sprout violets. On the 
spring festivals of the god-mother, a mighty pine was cut down as symbol 
of castration ; as in the Egyptian legend, the sycamores sprang from the 
blood. Agdistis himself sprang from the semen of Zeus spilled on the 
ground from Kybele struggling against his violence ; in same manner, 
arose Erichthonios and other beings from spilt semen, to which, at other 
times, the blood corresponds. That also, the fruits of this phallus tree, 
which stuck Nana in her breast, are to be interpreted purely sexually, is 
shown by the myth of Zagreus, who, under the pretext of castrating him- 
self, threw the testicles of a ram into the breast of the impregnated Deo. 



56 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

bed. The reincarnation in the German legend corresponds to the 
rebirth in the Egyptian. But further, the previous beheading of 
the brother by the marshal we will consider in the same sense 
as the castration of the unwished for rival, as on the other hand, 
the cutting off of the dragon's heads 27 and still more plainly the 
cutting out of the dragon's tongues points to the revenge. In this 
connection, we think we recognize also in the motive of vowing 
faithfulness by the knife stuck in the tree the last remnant of the 
old castration motive which is already ethically disallowed. The 
knife corresponds to that with which Anup pursued his brother, 
but further to the two-edged sword which the intruder lays 
between himself and his brother's wife. The sticking it in the 
trunk seems thus a last echo of the cutting down of the tree 
(castration) and it becomes conceivable, how either of the two 
can recognize in this instrument, according to his wish, that the 
brother has died. 

As in the Egyptian legend, so we distinguish also in the Ger- 
man, a series of successive scenes, which ever more plainly repre- 
sent in variously clear guise, the rivalry with the brother, the 
mutual incestuous object of love and the castration of the hated 
rival. 

In how explicit manner these ancient motives originally rule 
the legendary material is shown in many points still plainer than 
in the Egyptian legend, by the myths of Isis and Osiris under- 
lying this legend, in the chief characteristics of which we will 
orient ourselves without taking into consideration in detail the 
distortions and complications adhering to them. 

The earth god Keb and the heaven goddess Nut have four 
children : two sons, Osiris and Seth, and two daughters, Isis and 
Nephthys. Isis became the wife of her brother Osiris, Nephthys 
that of Seth ; Osiris, however, ruled the earth as king and became 

27 Psyche, of whom it is characteristically said : " in the same being, 
she hates the monster and loves the husband," is informed by her sisters 
"that a horrible dragon twisted into many knots, with poison swollen, 
blood-engorged throat and hideous craw, sleeps with her nights." The 
sisters counsel her to steal to his couch at night, when he is asleep : 
" boldly raise the right hand and with all her power, sever with the two 
edged sword the knots of the dragon which bind the throat and head 
together." 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 57 

hated unto death by his brother Seth, who enticed him by- 
stratagem into a chest and hurled this into the Nile. Plutarch's 
version gives as reason for this enmity of Seth against Osiris, 
that the latter had unwittingly had intercourse with the wife of 
Seth, thus his own sister, Nephthys. Isis starts in search of the 
corpse of her husband and finally finds it and brings it into the 
forest. Seth discovers the hiding place and dismembers the body 
of his brother. Isis collects the scattered members and puts 
them together again ; only the phallus is missing, it had been 
borne to sea and swallowed by a fish (as with Bata). She re- 
places the missing member of the dead by one made of wood of 
the sycamore (tree phallus) and founds, as a memorial, the 
phallus idol. With the help of her son, Horus, who, according 
to later traditions, had been begotten by Osiris after his death, 
Isis avenges the murder of her husband and brother. Between 
Horus and Seth, who were originally brothers themselves, arises 
a bitter struggle, in which the combatants tear off from each 
other certain parts as power-bestowing amulets ; Seth dug out an 
eye of his opponent's and swallowed it but lost at the same 
time however, his own genitals (castration) which — according to 
a remark of Schneider's — had originally certainly been swallowed 
by Horus. Finally, Seth is compelled to give the eye back, which 
Horus gives to the dead Osiris, and thereby brings him to life 
so that he can go to the kingdom of the dead as ruler. 

The Osiris myth, into the interpretation of which we cannot 
enter here, shows plainly that the rival had originally actually 
filled his brother's place in the conjugal bed and that his castra- 
tion followed from the jealous brother. Further, the phallic 
significance of the sycamore, as well as the conception of these 
being cut down as castration, is here substantiated, for Isis pre- 
pares a replica out of sycamore wood in place of the missing 
member, which, like that of Bata's, had been swallowed by a 
fish. Further, this motive, in symbolical dress, exists in the 
Osiris saga. On the place where the dead remains of Osiris rest, 
springs up (according to Plutarch, c. 15 ff.) a tamarisk, which 
the king orders cut down in order to have a column prepared 
from it. Isis, who serves at the court, claims the column and 
brings to life the dismembered corpse of Osiris by her kisses so 



58 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

that he again possesses creative power ; she becomes the mother 
of a child with crooked, powerless legs (symbol of castration), a 
new incarnation of Osiris. Thus, we find here also the incestu- 
ous rebirth from the own mother as with Bata, Attis and many 
others, as powerful motive, and with this, a basis for under- 
standing also the motive of reincarnation in the legend. If the 
cutting off of the head is a symbol of castration, " displaced 
upward," so the replacement of this, signifies the compensation 
for the phallus, as in the Osiris saga ; as the reincarnation in the 
German legend results from the eating of a root, in the Egyptian 
from the delivery of the heart lying on the cedar tree, and in the 
Osiris saga, from the swallowing of a torn-out eye, a remnant of 
the original motive in the Horus-Seth combat betrays to us that 
it really deals with the incorporation, the reattainment of the lost 
genitals, which the rebirth from the own mother and the coin- 
cident overcoming of death, render possible. Thus, it becomes 
evident that the hero brings back to life, not only the dead 
brother (as his son, that is however as himself) but also snatches 
away the princess from the kingdom of the underworld (which 
the dragon also represents) . Now we know, however, from 
analytic experience and mythological evidence, that the saving 
phantasy regularly concerns the mother and we should, there- 
fore, also conceive the first reincarnation of the hero, resulting 
therefrom, as incestuous rebirth. This is so much the easier 
confirmed, since both the Osiris myth and also the legend of 
Bata, plainly attest the incestuous significance of the courted 
sexual object. If we transfer this interpretation into the German 
legend, then we understand that there can be absolutely no men- 
tion of the mother of the brothers, since she is hidden behind the 
other female persons of the narrative ; we comprehend also, the 
voluntary renunciation (motive of abstinence) of sexual inter- 
course, as it finds expression in the one year abstinence and in 
the motive of the laying down of the sword (symbolum cas- 
tratis), 28 on the one hand as refusal of incest, on the other hand, 

28 The common practice of tracing back the motive of separation by 
a sword to the historical custom of match-maker and the marriage cere- 
mony symbolically completed with this, does not explain, especially the 
special symbolism applied therewith, and seems, therefore, to be compelled 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 59 

as ambivalent penitential attitude for the accomplished murder of 
the rival (father, brother). Not only in the friendly figure of 
the giver of life and of the longed for sexual object, does the 
mother appear in the legend, but also in the figure of the fearful 
goddess of death, who will transfer one into eternal sleep (death- 
like condition of the conqueror of the dragon; petrification), and 
whom the hero must overcome like the other evil forces. There- 
fore, Bata has his mother and wife, after she has borne him 
again, executed, and in the German legend, the witch is burned 
after she has brought the petrified brother to life. 

We interrupt the interpretation here, which may be still 
further followed 20 in individual details, in order to gain a general 
viewpoint for the psychology of myth formation. To this end, 
we need only to proceed to the reduction of the mythical persons 
to the egocentric figure of the myth-maker. It must strike us 
that the two brothers are twins who resemble each other not 
only physically, " like two drops of water," but also in their char- 
acteristics and attributes (they have the same animals, same 

to yield to a mythical conception, the foundation of which, F. v. Reitzen- 
stein (Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., 1909, p. 644-683) has pointed out in the mar- 
riage customs of primitive peoples. According to this, the sword utilized 
in the traditions quoted, as symbolum castratis, serves originally for the 
fructification in form of a stick or staff, which the husband lays between 
himself and his young wife the first three nights, during which he abstains 
from coitus. From ignorance of the causal relationship between sexual 
intercourse and pregnancy, he yields in the first three nights, in a manner, 
to a god, the jus prima? noctis for miraculous fructification, only after 
whose pretended entrance may he first indulge in sexual pleasure. 

29 Aside from further psychological interpretations, we forego also 
any natural mythological interpretation which might be possible. Thus, 
it is not excluded that the city at different times one year apart, now deco- 
rated in black, now in red, has reference to a definite sun-constellation 
(or moon phenomenon?) just as it remains striking that the production 
of the herb for the revivification of the sun hero took into consideration 
exactly twenty-four hours. If one takes notice of the reversed position 
of the head when he awoke and its reversal, at noon (as the sun changes 
to descent), then the interpretation of individual motives by projection 
upon nature processes becomes probable. Still, these interpretations in 
no way exclude the psychological sense of the narrative, but rather de- 
mand for comprehension the tale in human guise and the myth-forming 
forces of instinct which can scarcely be exhausted in the description of 
processes of nature. 



60 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

clothing, etc.), and are also not distinguished by names, so that 
the queen recognizes her husband only by an artificial sign. 
Whenever there is anything suitable for a duplication, it is ap- 
plied to both brothers, of which the one is an exact stereotype of 
the other ; with this reduction of the two brothers to one person 30 
would go, however, the chief sense of the narrative, the rivalry 
of the brothers for the mutual object of love, if we did not 
remember that originally one brother was an elder one and repre- 
sented the father to the younger, as is plainly stated in the legend 
of Bata. (As remnant of this older version, the German legend 
speaks in one place still of the "younger" brother, although it 
presupposes twins.) But also in the German legend, the dragon, 
who claims the princess, and the old king, who will not give her 
up, represent the father, as indeed the courted woman, according 
to our interpretation, stands for the mother. Both assumptions 
are abundantly confirmed by variants of the brother legend, which 
begin with the statement that a jealous king shuts up his daughter 
from the world, the latter, however, conceives in a miraculous 
manner (incest-fructification) and becomes the mother of twin 
brothers, whom she exposes ; one of the brothers then marries, 
as in the quoted legend of Lubia, page 453, note 25, in the king's 
daughter, his mother and after the death of the old king (the 
father), inherits the kingdom. Thus, in these legends, we are 
dealing with a displacement of the hostile and jealous impulses, 
which were originally directed toward the father, upon the elder, 
favorite brother (and upon the sister instead of upon the mother), 
which substitution may still be followed in the Osiris myth with 
its serially arranged generations. 31 This mythical displacement 
reflects a bit of primitive cultural achievement which, with the 
leveling of the previously so dissimilar enemy to a double of the 

30 In certain legends of this group, appears as a matter of fact only 
one "brother." Compare for example in "Schwedische Volkssagen," trans, 
by Oberleitner, p. 58 ff. 

31 The Osiris myth shows still further in course of its development 
how, from the original murderer of the brother, he becomes his avenger. 
Originally, Thoth besides Seth is the murderer of Osiris ; later, he appears 
in the struggle of Horus against Seth as physician and umpire. Finally, 
he has become directly partisan of Osiris and fights for him against Seth 
(compare Schneider, I. c, p. 445 ff.). 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 6 1 

twin, has found an ethically satisfactory conclusion in the pious 
brother legend. 

But the development resting on the progressive repression of 
these primitive impulses, does not stop with this form of amelio- 
ration, but creates still further disguised forms of expression, 
which become comprehensible to us on the basis of the psycho- 
logical interpretation of the brother motive. The Grimm brothers 
have already called attention to the internal relations between the 
Siegfried saga and our legend. 32 Here may be mentioned only 
that Siegfried leaves the virgin, rescued from the dragon like 
the hero of the legend, that he, however, like the latter, attempted 
to assume the place of the rival in the conjugal bed, indeed is 
finally directly compelled by Gunther to subdue for him the too 
powerful maid. 33 Siegfried also lays a two-edged sword between 
himself and the woman, but the ignominious death which he 
suffers speaks still plainly for the fact that he originally must 
have been in reality the favored rival. Only here, the relation of 
rivals is weakened to blood brotherhood. 34 Still further goes the 

32 W. Mannhardt (Germ. Mythen, p. 214 ff.) has shown the agree- 
ment of our group of legends with the Indian saga related in the Mahab- 
harata, " that Indra after the death of the dragon, Ahi (after the murder 
of Vritras), yields himself to banishment, another takes his place and 
wishes to marry the wife of the god, then Indra comes back and kills the 
intruder." Mannhardt thinks that " the other may be traced back to a 
figure as nearly related and brotherlike to Indra as Agni." Agni is called 
Indra's twin brother and a "grandson of the flood" (apam napat). 
Further, Mannhardt calls attention to similar traits in the myths of 
Freyr, Thor and Odin (pp. 221-223). 

33 Her deathlike sleep corresponds to the motive of petrification in 
the legend and points to her maternal role toward the hero, which is also 
evident from other signs. 

34 In this group of legends belong, according to Grimm's assertions, 
also the saga of the blood brothers, of whom one assumes the place of 
the other with the wife, but lays a sword between them and is finally 
struck with leprosy (according to Grimm, petrification), from which his 
true friend frees him by the blood of his own children. These are then 
brought to life again by the rescued one by a miracle. Likewise belongs 
here the legend of "True John" (No. 6) for whose rescue from petrifi- 
cation (revivification by blood), the king strikes off the heads of his own 
sons, which the true John again returns to them. In one version, this 
is the foster brother of the king. Also, the legend of life water (No. 97) 
and many another would become comprehensible in many points on the 



62 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

amelioration of the shocking relation in one group of German 
saga, which are handed down to us only in late writings: the 
Ortnit-Wolfdietrich Epic. Ortnit, with the help of his father the 
dwarf king Alberich, wins the daughter of the heathen king 
Machorel, who is accessible to no suitor, and elopes with her to 
his home (Gardasee). The old heathen king, feigning recon- 
ciliation, sends rich presents, among them, two young dragons 
(twin motive) which, when they grow up, devastate the land. 
Ortnit allows the monster to exist in spite of the counsel of his 
wife and tells her, if he should fall, to offer her hand to his 
avenger. Without followers, he rides in the forest, sinks into so 
deep a sleep (petrification) that neither the approach of the 
monster nor the baying and snapping of his dog awakes him 
(helping animal). He is killed by the monster. 

In the saga handed down to us, the young hero, Wolfdietrich, 
avenges him, in the childhood story of which, the motive of the 
father, who shuts up his daughter, the slander of the wife by the 
rejected suitor, the exposure and other motives play their parts 
in familiar significance. In the combat with his brothers over the 
inheritance, Wolfdietrich flees to Ortnit for help. When he 
learns of his death, he does not hesitate to avenge him. Like the 
second brother in the legend, he encounters almost the same 
fate but is able, in the decisive moment, to save himself by 
Ortnit's sword. He conquers the dragon, as well as the rebellious 
vassals, and receives as reward the hand of Ortnit's widow, by 
whose help he conquers the brothers and gains his kingdom. We 
easily recognize the familiar characteristics of our legend again 
and must conclude that Wolfdietrich avenged the death of his 
brother and married his widow. That is now demonstrable of 
course, if not in the superficial historical strata, still, in the under- 
lying mythical layers of the narrative, and long known to in- 
vestigators. If we follow Jiriczek's comprehensive representa- 

basis of our interpretation. For the arrangement of all these traditions 
in the group of brother legends, Wundt (Volkerpsychol., Vol. II, Part 3, 
Leipsic, 1909, p. 271 ff.) takes accordingly the term of the twin legends 
in a broader sense, since he includes thereunder " all the legend or myth 
material in which two personalities, who belong to the same generation, 
appear by their actions in a friendly or hostile relation. . . ." 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 63 

tion of German Hero Saga (Sammlung Goschen, No. 32), 35 we 
learn that in the tradition before us two saga of different origin, 
which have nothing to do with each other, are united : a mythical 
one of Ortnit, and the historical one of Wolfdietrich, in which 
the latter may stand in place of a mythical figure belonging to the 
Ortnit saga. A purer version of the Ortnit saga may be con- 
tained fragmentarily in the Thidrek saga, where King Hertnit 
falls in combat with a dragon, a hero (Thidrek of Bern) con- 
quers the dragon and marries the widow. " From the allusions 
and fragments of saga of Scandinavian tradition, an older form 
of the saga may be determined, in which the brother of the fallen 
assumes the role of avenger. This mythical pair of brothers are 
called in Northern terminology " Haddingjar," German "Har- 
tungen," compare the name "Hartnit" (Hertnit) from which 
Ortnit is distorted. Guided by these names, Mullenhoff has 
derived in clever manner the connection of the Hartungen saga 
with an east Germanic Dioscuri myth" (Jiriczek, p. 146 ff.). 86 
If the original brotherly relation of the two heroes is here fixed 
by comparative myth investigation, then we recognize on the basis 
of our interpretation, behind the pious office of avenger, the real 
relation of rivalry, and know that in the deeper sense of a 
psychological interpretation, the prejudiced brother slays the 
favorite rival in the form of a dragon in order to possess his 
widow, quite like GEdipus in the Greek myth. The replacement 
of the brother by a monster represents therewith a special form 
of duel with the unknown father, which is reported in numerous 
traditions, also of Ortnit and his overpowering father, Alberich. 37 

35 One compares also the most recent special work of H. Schneider : 
Die Gedichte und die Sage vom Wolfdietrich, Munich, 1913. 

36 Also the Dioscuri motive itself, the avenging of the stolen and 
disgraced sister by a pair of brothers, which exists with various peoples, 
originally has as content the struggle of two (twin) brothers for the 
mutually loved sister (representing the mother), which may have ended 
with the castration of the opponent, of which, according to the keen sur- 
mise of the natural mythologist, Schwartz, an echo in meaning may still 
be contained in the name of the Greek Dioscuri, Castor (from castrare). 

37 This shows prettily (communicated by R. Kohler, Kl. Schr., I, 21 ff.) 
in a Gaelic legend (variant of Grimm's legend No. 21), where two 
brothers court a knight's daughter and, unknown to each other, fight 
together. 



64 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

This unrecognized duel itself is the counterpart of unrecognized 
(incestuous) sexual intercourse, which is represented in our 
group of legends by the motive of the exchange of husbands 
(weakened by the symbol of chastity). 

Thus, in ultimate analysis, the legend leads back to the primi- 
tive family conflict with the overpowerful father and represents 
for the prejudiced son or youngest, in disguised dress, a wish cor- 
rection of the unpleasant adaptation to reality. If we have 
noticed that the myth structure, with the progressive amelioration 
of ancient abomination to pious human esteem and love of rela- 
tives, reflects a piece of ethical cultural development, so too it 
should not remain unmentioned that in addition, inconceivably old 
remnants of primitive affect life continue to live in this legend. 
It shows, thus, of course the development of the ethical feeling 
but not in the form as it has really come to be, namely, with 
renunciation of earlier sources of pleasure and final adapation to 
the hard demands of reality, but always with the retention of the 
old primitive modes of gratification, which find symbolical ful- 
fillment in the form of disguised wish phantasies under the 
superficial moral layers. 

A typical example for the legend in this regard, that discloses 
at once the primitive human nucleus of the mythical dress, has 
been afforded us by the exhibition of the history of the legends of 
the brothers. In the ultimate analysis, there exists in almost all 
mythical structures, the old unlimited power of the pater familias, 
against which the son in the original strata of the phantasy forma- 
tion rebels. If there inheres in the father, as the primitive rela- 
tions presuppose, unlimited control over the life of the male 
members of the family (including the sons), and over the bodies 
of the female members (including the daughters), then it is con- 
ceivable that the struggle of the son aims to attain this preroga- 
tive of the " father " for himself, and indeed at first, by cor- 
responding acts, which challenge still more strongly the paternal 
development of power. The father may have made frequent use 
of the law to force out of the clan the sons, who have grown 
insubordinate to him, as rivals for power or castrate them as 
sexual rivals, and in this way he may have strengthened the 
corresponding revengeful thoughts of the son to intense longing 
for vengeance. This stage of the cultural development is re- 



INVESTIGATION OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS 65 

fleeted, according to an idea of Freud's, in the numerous legends 
in which the adult sons, as in our group, are driven out by the 
father, or elder brother (exposure), to attain fame and wife in 
foreign lands. While in early cultural development, however, 
reality has actually demanded this sacrifice and exertion by the 
son, he seeks, at the same time, to indemnify himself in phantasy 
formation, for he forms the new home after the model of the 
old one, which he has lost, endows the foreign king, in whose 
service he enters, with the traits of his own father (family 
romance), the desired and captured love object with the type of 
the incestuous one longed for in vain. Thus, the hero of the 
Egyptian brother legend, who wishes to seduce the mother, is 
driven out by the favored rival (father, brother) (pursuit with 
drawn knife) or castrated (self-castration) or killed (abode in 
the cedar valley). The picture of the mother, however, follows 
him everywhere ; he lives with the god-wife until she is taken 
from him by the king, in whom we recognize a father image. 
The hero follows her to the court, which represents nothing else 
than the wished-for return to the parental home (rendered un- 
recognizable), where the son can carry out in a cover picture of 
strange persons, the unallowed wish gratifications denied by 
reality. The same scheme of ruthless execution by the most 
prejudiced youngest son is shown by a series of legends, as well 
as by the majority of myths, in an original stratum, which, never- 
theless, in course of the progress of culture and the consequent 
arrangement and subjection of the individual under the govern- 
mental forces, is overlaid by the ambivalent counter impulses of 
regret and piety, in the sense of the paternal relationship. 38 In 

38 Certainly there are, even though in limited degree, original phan- 
tasy formations proceeding from inhibited wish impulses of the father. 
Especially seem to belong here the numerous myths and legends which 
have for content the sexual persecution of the daughter by the father, the 
highly complicated wish mechanisms of which often bear witness to how 
hard these primitive renunciations fell on man. The scheme is, in similar 
manner as with the son myth, the compensation of the family : A king 
pursues his daughter with love proposals, she flees, and after many adven- 
tures, comes to a king, who marries her, in whom one recognizes, how- 
ever, a more or less plain duplication of the father. Also in reality, the 
daughter, who has escaped from the sexual violence of the father by 
flight, is seen to occupy toward the man who receives and protects her a 
childlike relation of dependence. 

6 



66 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

this stage of myth formation, there come into the foreground the 
ethically highly valuable, psychologically secondary, motives of 
paternal revenge, brotherly love, the defence of the mother or 
sister against troublesome assailants. So long as the heedless 
sexual and primitive egoistic motives can control the conscious 
action and thought of man, he has neither the necessity nor the 
ability for myth formation. The substitute gratification in 
phantasy formation runs parallel to the gradual renunciation of 
the real accomplishment of these impulses ; the sometime com- 
pensations render it possible for man, progressively and success- 
fully, to suppress certain impulses to a certain degree. The myth- 
ical narrative as it enters consciousness, is in every case no un- 
distorted expression of primitive impulses, otherwise, they could 
not become conscious ; on the other hand, for the same reason, 
they are not related of the human family, which would still be 
too shocking, but are imputed to superhuman beings, it may be, 
mysterious powerful heavenly bodies, or the gods, conceived as 
acting behind these, or heroes elevated to such. Thus, perhaps, 
may be explained the contradiction that the myths consciously 
represent naive knowledge of nature, and can mediate, while 
purely human elements finish the form of the mythical tale, the 
strongly affective damming up of which affords the real in- 
stinctive force for the myth formation. 

According to this viewpoint, the myth and legend formation 
should be considered rather as a negative of the cultural devel- 
opment, in a certain measure as fixations of the wish impulses 
which have become inapplicable in reality and unattainable grati- 
fications which the present-day child must learn to renounce in 
favor of culture even though with difficulty and displeasure, as 
the primitive man had to in his time. This function of admission 
and symbolically dressed gratification of socially inapplicable in- 
stinctive impulses, the myth shares, however, with religion, with 
which it long formed an inseparable unit. Only the few great 
religious systems of humanity, in the capability for transforma- 
tion and sublimation of these instincts, in the degree of disguising 
the gratification of these and in the ethical heights of mind thereby 
rendered possible, have attained a perfection, which lifts them 
far above the primitive myth and naive legend, with which they 
hold in common the essential instinctive forces and elements. 



CHAPTER III 
Theory of Religion 

Religion has not always been the inseparable companion of 
humanity; rather, in the history of development, a prereligious 
stage has assumed a large place and with this stage, we must 
deal first in order to gain an insight into the psychical genesis 
of religion. 

The attitude ruling men in this prereligious epoch was the ani- 
mistic, that is, the primitive races peopled the world with beings 
to whom they ascribed life and soul as with themselves ; the recog- 
nition of inanimate objects of the outer world was still lacking to 
them. In order to succeed in this conception, man had first to 
acquire the capability of sharply distinguishing between the proc- 
esses of the external world and the endopsychic perceptions. So 
long as the division into internal and external world, ego and non- 
ego, had not been fully elaborated, the knowledge that the psychic 
reality produced by hallucinatory means is different from objective 
reality perceived by the senses could not become fixed. Only by 
degrees, does reality, not only practically, but also theoretically, 
compel the recognition of its independent existence, so that the 
necessity is provided of controlling this with real means adapted 
to it, and not merely as result of reflection. With progressive 
adaptation to reality, the previous feeling of omnipotence, based 
on the mingling of objective with psychic reality, had to be in large 
part renounced and this feeling now saved itself in the field of 
endopsychic gratification in the phantasy life. 

Here is to be sought the starting point of all those structures 
which aim at guaranteeing to man in a mentally autonomous field 
withdrawn from reality, the pleasures which he had to sacrifice 
to the progress of culture. The phantasy gratification has at first 
no differentiated forms, gaining sharply outlined shape only grad- 
ually. 

The immediate precursors of religion are totemism and taboo. 
It is characteristic of both that the presupposition of the exist- 

67 



68 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ence of a higher being does not inhere in them, but that the com- 
mands and prohibitions appear as self evident and founded in 
themselves. If we consider the limitations and prohibitions con- 
tained in them in their essential forms, we find that they serve the 
end of withdrawing the opportunity for realizing definite wishes. 
The assertion of these rules make evident, on one side, that one 
may assume the universal existence of these wishes, on the other 
side, that one would avoid every temptation toward power. They 
would assure a very important renunciation, brought about with 
great trouble and outlay of energy, for the good of the whole 
community. If the conception of psychoanalysis is correct, that 
the essential presupposition of culture consists in the repression 
of intense, pleasurably toned tendencies, which act, however, 
against all social development, then the material affected by the 
primitive prohibition must return as the deepest layer of the un- 
conscious. As a matter of fact, one of the most important func- 
tions of totemism consisted in preventing incest and the most 
important case of taboo of the ruler is plainly intended to render 
impossible the application of force against the chief, who origi- 
nally coincided with the head of the family. 

As a result of this prohibition and the constantly recurring 
resistance against it, a psychic tension is produced, which is felt 
by the individual as anxiety. As a means of psychic compensa- 
tion for this tension, there was formed the mechanism of pro- 
jection into the outer world, whereby the conflict is settled, and 
the previously indefinite anxiety can be thrown on imaginary ob- 
jects. This was just so much the more readily possible as the 
animistic view had prepared the way for the projection mechan- 
ism, so that the animate beings who arose on a basis of this view 
and peopled the outer world became demons, to whom one 
ascribed the will and the power to do harm. With the belief in 
demons, the first stage of religion was attained. Hand in hand 
with it goes the organization of magic and witchcraft as techniques 
which might influence the demons, partly with a view to scare 
them away, partly to submit to them or put them in good humor. 

Thereby, the belief in demons received a new direction, in that 
the spirits were placed in relation to impressive processes of 
nature and the heavenly bodies ; then began the building of myth- 
ology, while magic found its continuation in cult and rite. In all, 



THEORY OF RELIGION 69 

however, even to the finest offshoots, the original totem and taboo 
views may be recognized. 

The needs, on the one hand, of bringing the processes of nature 
nearer by incarnating them, and on the other hand, of solving the 
human emotional conflicts by projecting them out into nature, 
unite in the tendency to myth formation. The hitherto indefi- 
nitely conceived demons assume the characteristic traits of the in- 
dividual phenomena of nature and are brought into relations with 
one another; these are copied after the human ones and at the 
same time represent the opposing influence of those processes of 
nature on one another. In this way, the demons one after another 
are raised to gods. Since the wishes, which are denied and later 
repressed, spur the phantasy to ever new results, so new figures 
and stories are continually attached to the same processes of 
nature, so long as the myth forming process is still fluid, and in 
this way are explained the many figures in the Pantheon of all 
ancient religions. 

Thus, the social function of mythology is to direct the injur- 
ious repressed instincts, as far as it can, to the way of phantasy 
gratification and to promote the elimination of these from reality. 
Since, however, a part of the original gratification in reality im- 
periously demands its rights in accordance with the principle of 
the return of the repressed material from the repressing, just those 
institutions are utilized which had been created for the prevention 
of the carrying through of this. Thus, the aspirations for which 
the myth-forming phantasy had opened an outlet, which should 
protect the whole community (tribe, race, people, state) from 
their realization, were redirected by the other parts of religion, 
namely, by cult and rite. Religion is, like every product of the 
conflict between unconscious and repression, a compromise struc- 
ture. The double phase which lies in it, that it opens the road to 
civilization and yet under certain conditions allows the things most 
hostile to the same, clings to it throughout its whole course of 
development. At times also, the compromise may fail entirely and 
religious fanaticism, which then succeeds to leadership, becomes 
an instrument of destruction for everything which renders possible 
the existence of human society. 

But already in the very earliest stage, we meet this inner 
double phase. Before there were religious myths or ritual, the 



70 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

taboo of the rulers was utilized, not only to protect their persons, 
but also to torment them most profoundly by the strict ceremonial. 
The killing of the totem animal, which is commonly strictly for- 
bidden, is not only permitted on certain feast days but directly 
enjoined as a religious duty. From this custom developed the 
sacrifice, as motive for which it was established that the man 
should cede to god what he had to give up, in order later, on 
festal occasions, to be allowed it as servant and representative of 
god. 39 Thus, the sacrifice goes back to the presupposition of iden- 
tification with the godhead; quite in this sense speaks S. Reinach 
(Orpheus, p. 63) : " Si les legendes humanisent les dieux, les rites 
tendent a diviniser les hommes " (If the legends humanize the 
gods, the rites tend to deify the men). Thus at the feasts cele- 
brated in honor of the gods, the strictly forbidden incest could 
recur as holy orgy. 

This recurrence of the prohibited is no simple regression, 
which allows the antisocial to revive again, but for its accomplish- 
ment, the way is over conditions of phantasy ideas ; and if leaving 
the domain of the purely mental, they finally culminate in actions, 
then, these actions are carried out entirely with phantastic sym- 
bolic elements. For the facilitation of this compromise between 
phantasy and reality, the cultic performance in reference to time 
and place is taken from the everyday affairs and elevated above 
them. In this way, the encroachment on customary social rela- 
tions is prevented, so that in spite of the carrying out of the 
unallowed, no friction with the cultural demands threatens. 

All these religious practices, as compromise products, have a 
double face: their effect consists in the facilitation of the renuncia- 
tion of the gratification of socially hostile instincts, their essence 
lies in their allowing, partly, merely in the myth creating phantasy, 
partly, by cultistic and ritualistic practice, the forbidden acts 
represented in this phantasy. 

With the increasing demands of the repression, the limited 
festal manner of celebration is felt as improper and no longer 
permitted in undisguised form. In its place appears a series of 
ritualistic acts in symbolic circumlocution. Similarly, the relig- 
ious ceremonial undergoes in its development from the primitive 

39 " What the man is not, but wishes to be, that he imagines himself 
as being in the gods" (Feuerbach). 



THEORY OF RELIGION 71 

patterns, ever more extensive distortions, which may often attain 
the complete dissolution of the original meaning. Among these 
ceremonies, we emphasize one especially interesting group, which 
we meet everywhere, from the most primitive to the most highly 
developed relations. It is that which comprises the various purifi- 
cation measures for sins, and penitential acts which betray the 
subterranean feeling of guilt permeating all religion. This abso- 
lutely unfailing presence of the feeling of guilt shows us that the 
whole structure of religion is erected on a foundation of repres- 
sion of instinct. 

Another form of the religious act is connected with the previ- 
ously mentioned magic. The magic influence consists in the cir- 
cumstance that a wished-for effect is brought about by actions or 
words (formulas) which have some kind of an associative con- 
nection with it, but are in no way sufficient to cause it according 
to the laws of nature; for example, the injury of an enemy by 
injuring his picture. This exalting beyond the laws of nature is 
the remnant of the feeling of omnipotence, which had its origin in 
overestimation of mental reality and which man had to renounce 
as far as adaptation to reality compelled. Magic has, as a presup- 
position, the belief that the power of the wish alone is sufficient to 
accomplish difficult, often impossible changes in the external 
world. The belief in the omnipotence of thought centers in the 
overvaluation of the power of speech, which is so deep rooted that 
it is considered sufficient to speak aloud the name of a person in 
order to influence him in the desired direction. This idea of the 
magical effect of speech is the foundation of prayer; for, with 
the giving up of the idea of a direct influencing by speech, there 
appears in its place the petition directed toward a personally con- 
ceived supernatural being, which petition betrays itself in double 
manner, as direct continuation of the faith in the omnipotence of 
the wishes. On the one hand, the petitioner expects that the 
solemn voicing aloud of his wishes avails to cause the god to 
fulfill them, on the other hand, he has at the same time indirectly 
preserved the feeling of omnipotence which he had to renounce 
by resignation to the godhead, with which he unconsciously iden- 
tifies himself. The last step in the religious elaboration of prayer 
depreciates the significance of the word and renders mental the 
relation to god by placing faith in the central point and making the 
result of the prayer dependent on him. 



72 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

To primitive humanity, it seemed self evident, that everything 
which was forbidden to itself, should be permitted to the godhead 
or the man in the service of the same. This exceptional freedom 
passed as an essential attribute of god and his chosen servants, 
kings and priests. In this way, these were enveloped in the glory 
of the supernatural, especially when incestuous marriage was 
allowed them or indeed commanded, as, for example, with the 
Persian priests and Egyptian sovereigns. 

With the rise from demons to god, goes a revolution in the 
attitude which rests on the ambivalence of instinctive forces which 
share in all religious formations. While, originally, only the hostil- 
ity against the father and the rivalry for his superior power, as well 
as the wish springing from this hostility to oust him, came to ex- 
pression, higher stages of development show ever more plainly 
the influence of love and reverence, which the son feels toward the 
father. For this reason, the gods are not, like the demons, merely 
hostile creatures, who are angry and punish, but also gracious 
ones who can protect and reward. In particular, since the incest 
barrier between mother and son had become fixed, from excessive 
fear of the transgression of this, not merely did the purely 
libidinous longings, but also the inseparably united impulses of 
affection, become unpermitted, as the numerous taboo prohibitions 
show ; this circumstance limited the association of mother and son, 
often to extreme degree. This affection, not finding realization in 
the love life, now seeks gratification in the religious phantasy life 
and creates the figure of the maternal godhead — Istar, Isis, Rhea, 
Mary — at the same time lessening the austere traits of the father 
god. To these beloved and revered figures could now no longer 
be ascribed all those attributes and actions which seemed horrible 
to consciousness. In this direction, a secondary elaboration sets 
in, which gathers the individual legends into a religious system 
adapted to the ethical and intellectual level of the epoch. This 
attempt, however, is never crowned with complete success, even 
though it may be continued with the greatest zeal for centuries, 
since the instinctive components at work have the tendency to be 
always harking back to the gross mythology of antiquity, as is 
still discernible in certain Christian sects of our day. 

Underlying the formation of a system, in process of time, 
there are also cult and ceremonial, which can thereby become so 



THEORY OF RELIGION 73 

estranged from their origin that often scarcely a trace of their 
original significance is to be recognized. A series of commands 
and prohibitions, not suited to systematization, then drop out of 
the religious framework entirely and either disappear or, stripped 
of their religious content, live on as hygienic rules. The elab- 
oration of a religious system carried far in regard to myth and 
cult, no longer takes into consideration sex, age and independent 
attitude of the individuals, but imposes on every believer its whole 
content, although the instinctive share which was especially prom- 
inent can find gratification only in a particular part of the same. 
As a result, the individual, even when he accepts the religious 
system in toto, has an especially close relationship only to certain 
parts which harmonize with his particular individual instinctive 
tendency. Thus, that one in whose own mental life the pleasure 
of inflicting or enduring pain plays an important role, will receive 
the Passion with much greater ardor, and revere it more de- 
voutly, than any other piece of Christian belief. From him who 
has felt intensely the sexual rivalry with the father, will the 
figure of the Virgin Mother win especial adoration as image of 
the fulfillment of his own childish wishes. Thus, it becomes evi- 
dent that behind the apparent uniformity which the great re- 
ligious systems spread over their confessors, a personal variation 
has a place, which finds its expression in the more or less con- 
scious private religion of the individual. 

In the cases just mentioned, the religious phantasies serve for 
representing not only forbidden, but also repressed wish-im- 
pulses, which have become foreign to the individual. These can 
appear in consciousness only in distorted and disguised form ; re- 
ligion affords the socially recognized forms, by which the re- 
ligious ceremonial is explained to the believer. Where, how- 
ever, individual agencies crowd so strongly into the foreground 
that they have submitted neither to the normal repression nor to 
the social arrangement rendered possible by the religion, there, 
a more intensive form of defence begins, which represses not 
only the wishes, but also the distorted phantasies, and leaves to 
an independent existence only the ceremonial belonging thereto. 
That is the case of the obsessional neurosis, in which there ap- 
pears the unmotivated impulse to continued repetition of certain 



74 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ceremonies. The mechanism of the obsessional ceremonial is 
strikingly parallel to that of the religious ceremonial, with the 
exception that the obsessional acts seem absolutely meaningless 
to the patient and those around him, while with the acts of the re- 
ligious ceremonial, the general recognition supplies the lacking 
real aim and sense. 

The most extreme consequence of the system formation re- 
sulting from the secondary elaboration is dogmatism. This ra- 
tionalizing factor inserts itself by its overgrowth between the 
emotional life of the individual and the religious structures 
created for this. The result is that, from time to time, especially 
gifted religious natures feel this two-sidedness, avoid the cooling 
circumlocution of dogma and seek anew a personal way of direct 
discharge. Therewith they reproduce for themselves a bit of 
the old past-and-gone content of religion. If such inspired ones 
have the further ability to act suggestively upon their contem- 
poraries, there arises the type of founder of a religion or re- 
former, in whom a strong mythical quality is never lacking, as 
the figures of Christ, Mohammed and Luther bear witness. 

Even where it does not come to the founding of a new sect, a 
mythical emotional stream will flow unceasingly into the re- 
ligion. The fundamental idea of mysticism is the return to life 
of the ancient idea of identification with the godhead, which is 
already realized in the idea of sacrifice; in its highest and most 
intimate form, as immediate union of the soul with its creator. 
But further, in this late and highly sublimated figure, the claims 
of the original repressed material assert themselves, since this 
identification easily assumes the traits of a sexual union with 
the godhead ; this is detected in many mystics by the analytic in- 
vestigation of their confessions, even in the finest intellectual 
commentaries and has progressed in individuals, especially ecstatic 
women, even to conscious phantasies (Christ as bridegroom). 
In recognition of the female and passive attitude of the mystic, 
Ludwig Feuerbach (in the notes to Wesen des Christentums, 
Kroners Volksausgabe, p. 181) says of him: "He makes himself 
a god, with whom, in the gratification of his desire for knowledge, 
he immediately gratifies at the same time his sexual instinct, that 
is, the instinct for a personal being." The mystical ecstasy can 



THEORY OF RELIGION 75 

increase to those forms of exaltation of which the history of re- 
ligion reports numerous examples. 

Thus, as previously animism in magic, so also the forms of 
mysticism tending to regression into the primitive, possess cer- 
tain techniques for the control of the supernatural world created 
from the projection of the unconscious, in spiritism, occultism 
and such like. 

In the foregoing presentation, we have sketched in the barest 
outlines the psychoanalytic position in the course of development 
of religious emotion. There remains for us an important prob- 
lem which has found no place in our discussions. As men- 
tioned, the primitive cults represent a partial breaking through 
of the forbidden wish-gratifications in a bit of reality extended 
beyond everyday life. It agrees well with the fundamental 
psychoanalytic principles that there meets us, as one of the most 
important and most frequent cultistic traditions, the incestuous 
union between the mother goddess and her husband-son, as in 
Istar and Tammuz in the Babylonian, to whom Astarte and 
Adonis correspond, further Isis and Osiris in regard to Horus 
in the Egyptian, Kybele and Attis in the Greek, Maja and Agni, 
Tanit and Mithra in the Indian, and finally, Izanami and Izanagi 
in the Japanese and many others. Also in the apocalypse of 
John, the queen of heaven is called the mother of the victor (12, 
1), while in other places, she is celebrated as his bride (21, 9 ff.). 
Robertson (Evang. Myth., p. 36) directly expresses the surmise 
that the relation of Christ to Mary probably points to an old 
myth "where a Palestine god, perhaps by the name of Joshua, 
appears in the alternating relations of lover and son toward a 
mythical Mary." The practice of incest, in part undisguised, in 
part symbolically permitted under certain presuppositions, seems 
to have invested these cults with manifold mysterious halos, as 
we have it transmitted, for example, of the Attis cult by a 
notice in Clemens Alexandrinus (Protr., 2) : "The son becomes 
the lover, which seems to have been the content of the mys- 
teries of Attis and Kybele " (Roscher's Lexikon d. griech. u. rom. 
Myth.). 

This temporary survival of incest in festive and mystically 
symbolical manner underwent, with the depreciation and elab- 



76 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

oration of the phantasy formations in course of development, 
various fates, of which we will here briefly follow one which has 
attained especial importance for the formation of religion. 

The tendency to repression against incest comes into force in 
the myths and cults cited, to the extent that the youthful son or- 
dinarily brought into sexual relation with the mother goddess, 
with the appearance of masculine maturity, immediately after 
this apogee of fructification, in the bloom of his years, succumbs 
to an early death. This sad fate is plainly shown in the tradi- 
tions, as punishment for the tabooed incest, where the husband- 
son suffers the fate of castration, it may be from sexual rivals, 
it may be at his own hand, as in the story of Uranus, who, with 
his mother Gaa, begot the children of the world, Attis, Adonis, 
Osiris and others. 

This tragic cutting off of the strong young god was joined to 
the corresponding impressive and important processes of nature, 
as setting of the sun and disappearance of vegetation, and thereby 
furnishes a motive for the psychic need for regular repetition 
of these cultistic acts, serving the gratification of instinct by 
appeal to the laws of nature. With this comparison of the indi- 
vidual fate with the cosmic processes, there came into account 
another wish impulse which dwells deep within all people, and 
is very important for the formation of religion and myths : 
namely, the tendency to deny the hard necessity of death and to 
avoid the recognition of it. Since this need fastens itself to the 
reverse of the processes of nature which are sad for men, thus, 
to the rising of the sun, to the recurrence of the fruitful seasons 
etc., there was afforded the god, sacrificed in the service of fruc- 
tification, the possibility of his resurrection, which, as a matter 
of fact, forms an essential element in all the traditions men- 
tioned. Here, a further phantasy comes in, at the bottom of 
which lies the symbolism of the earth as mother of living beings, 
and which, therefore, affords the individual incest phantasy a 
broader foundation and a new meaning. From the excised 
creative member of the husband-son, which the mother-wife 
carefully preserves (Isis, Kybele, Astarte, etc.), springs the new 
vegetation and thus arises to new life 40 also from the mother- 

40 Feasts, at which various peoples worshiped the phallus, were in later 
time drawn over to the rebirth in the future (according to Liebrecht, Zur 
Volkskunde, 1879). 



THEORY OF RELIGION 77 

earth, in which the sacrificed god or his essential attribute, the 
phallus, is buried, the resurrected god. This resurrection is 
joined to the incestuous wish by means of the old and typical 
phantasy of dying, as a return to the mother's womb, death as a 
continuation of the condition before birth. Hence the sacrificed 
god-saviors reside, before their resurrection, in a hole, often sur- 
rounded by water, which symbolizes the mother's womb and is 
already applied in this sense in the birth story of these god-men. 
In this way, the religious phantasy, by ever-increasing elabora- 
tion of the symbolism belonging to the mother libido, creates the 
typical figure of the sacrificed and resurrected god-savior, under 
whom lies the phantasy of the incestuous rebirth from the own 
mother (Jung). 

By the gradual recession of this incestuous significance of 
the mother godhead and the stronger emphasis of the wish for 
immortality, which ever increasingly rules the individual with 
the advancing knowledge of the necessity of death, there comes 
about the elaboration of the ideas of the future 41 which have 
already appeared early, to splendid phantasies which have as 
content the abode of the dead in an under- or overworld more 
or less closely related to the real world and promise man, after 
the lapse of a certain time, a new life on earth or a continued 
life in the future. Therewith is openly and expressly preserved 
the consolation which was originally possible to the individual 
only by way of unconscious identification with the god hero. 

The belief in immortality and resurrection, in which most 
philosophically expressed religious systems center, shows, if 
one traces it back to the incestuous rebirth, the most complete 
denial of the father conceivable, whose place the son replaces. 
This denial is — which is shown in the feeling of guilt discernible 
in every religion — a result of the infantile rivalry and hostility 
which persist in the unconscious and from there flow out into the 
religious life. The later dualism of many religions, in which, 
besides the creator, the destroyer appears, who were originally 

41 Compare Edw. Spiess, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Vorstellungen 
vom Zustande nach Tode auf Grand vergl. Religionsforschung darstellt, 
Jena, 1877. (History of the development of the ideas of the condition 
after death presented on the basis of comparative investigation of 
religion.) 



78 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

united in one figure, is a result of the splitting of emotion which 
satisfies the contradictions in the unconscious attitude toward the 
father, when they cease to be compatible, by separate represen- 
tations (separation into two or more figures, Ormuzd-Arhiman, 
God-Devil). The most extreme expression of the overcoming 
of the father is atheism, in which the individual relies entirely 
on himself and recognizes no creator or master. 

Furthermore, the ambivalent flow of emotions, which clings 
to the figure of the father and feels reverence as well as grati- 
tude toward him, as the first religious duty, never dries up. For 
the individual, the attitude which he has assumed toward the 
father in childhood remains a model of the attitude which he 
later assumes toward the creator of the world and the Father in 
Heaven. Even if he is compelled, as at the completion of the 
process of development, to be emancipated from the father or 
rebels against his authority, he can unconsciously retain the 
feelings of love and dependence on the father combined in his 
infantile attitude and bring them to expression in religion. 

Therewith, the circle is closed, since religion which has pro- 
ceeded from the relation of the child to its parents centers in a 
splendid compromise product of the ambivalent emotional im- 
pulses contained therein. 



CHAPTER IV 

Ethnology and Linguistics 

The facts important for the ethnological consideration can be 
brought to a folk-group both by physical and by psychical inter- 
action of definite factors, as origin, religion, economic relations, 
climate and the like ; the majority of these determinants disclose 
their influence simultaneously in both ways. Hence, a sharp 
separation is made difficult ; nevertheless, the method of investi- 
gation may not be a matter of no consequence, since the physical 
results of every influence must be explained by biology, the 
psychical by psychology. To put it differently, every interest- 
ing ethnological phenomenon needs investigation in both direc- 
tions, for a one-sided conception can afford no complete solution 
of the problem. 

It is obvious that psychoanalysis comes into consideration 
only in the psychological part, but for this, it gains a preemi- 
nent significance. We know that very much in the views and 
customs of a whole people, it may be in the field of customs and 
manners, it may be in that of religion and morality, cannot be 
traced back to processes in the conscious mental life of its mem- 
bers. If we would keep away from the mystical conception of a 
" folk-soul " hovering over them, which is not derived from the 
summation of individual minds, we are forced to the assump- 
tion that we are dealing with unconscious impulses. These must 
repeat themselves in typical form in almost all individuals of a 
civilized society, because otherwise the readiness of the members 
of the whole community to submit themselves to the influences 
proceeding from them would be inexplicable. The greatest serv- 
f ice of psychoanalysis consists in having helped us become ac- 
- . quainted with this typical unconscious mental content. When 
confronted by ethnological material we will ask ourselves just as 
in an individual psychological investigation, what bit of the un- 
conscious may be incorporated therein and by what mechanism, 
it may have come to expression, during which we will never 

79 



80 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

forget that after the conclusion of this investigation, still further 
information from other sides will be necessary. 

The promotion of ethnology by psychoanalysis belongs in 
greatest part to the future ; thus far, the facts that a series of 
community products stand in close relation to the unconscious 
mental life, have been utilized more in the reverse direction, that 
is to say, psychoanalysis has gained a valuable corroboration by 
finding its principles applicable in an entirely different field of 
knowledge and confirmed by the result of such application. In 
the manners and customs of various peoples there is repeated 
with absolute faithfulness the symbolism which had been de- 
termined in the interpretation of dreams. Thus, for example, 
the manifold ceremonies which accompany sowing and harvest, 
as well as the marriage festivities, are almost without exception 
only an accumulation of that symbolism by which in the dream, 
the acts or organs of fruitfulness and creation are represented. 
In this regard, the younger sister science of ethnology, the study 
of folk-lore, shows itself especially valuable, all the more so as it 
devotes itself intensively to the sexuality which ethnology has 
previously often passed by without noticing. The folk-lore ma- 
terial shows us not only the superstititions and the strange regu- 
lations which were so frequently joined to erotic activity but 
further than that, the influence which the more or less inhibited 
sexual life of a people can exercise on its other morality and 
thereby increases the psychoanalytic knowledge of the activity 
of the sexual repression on the mental life of the individual. 

If the symbolism of the folk manners and that of the customs 
handed down from the ancestors agrees in many cases with that 
in which the unconscious clothes itself in dreams and related forms 
of expression, then we must see in that fact much more than a 
mere example of chance. What has been said in the first chapter 
concerning the essential characteristics and origin of symbolism 
suffices to point out to us the way to a knowledge of the regu- 
larity of this phenomenon. Symbolism is the remnant of a one 
time identity between the symbol and that represented, which 
existed in the primitive mental life; this comes to view again, 
therefore, where simpler mental processes come into play which 
are subjected to the first principle of psychic phenomena, the 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 8l 

gaining of pleasure, and pay little or no attention to the compul- 
sion of adaptation to reality. Thus, the symbols of the folk 
customs should, like those of the dream language, be consid- 
ered as residuals of a departed age. In the dream, the analysis 
has verified this assumption, for its root is shown to be the re- 
gression toward the infantile, which is accomplished by the re- 
viving of childhood memories and also by the application of in- 
fantile forms of thinking to recent impressions (daily remnants). 
The past age, to which the ethnological material refers, cannot 
belong to the individual but only to the people as a whole, and 
ultimately, since the boundaries between peoples disappear in the 
remotest past, to humanity. This comparison between individual 
and folk past is indeed most strikingly plain in the symbolism 
but by no means limited to this. A searching investigation re- 
vealed sufficient grounds to justify the supposition that the col- 
lective primitive forms of mental life, as they exist in the child, 
and remain preserved in the unconscious of adults, are identical 
within certain limits with the processes of the mental life of the 
savage, so far as these may hold as reflections of primitive 
humanity ; likewise, that the further course of development, which 
the child passes through in order to attain the level of civilized 
people, can be considered as an extremely condensed repetition 
of the way which the whole of humanity has passed through to 
the civilization of the present. 

We have, at the beginning, called the repression the result of 
the culture of the community acting on the individual. Now, we 
see that its counterpart, the unconscious, also stretches out be- 
yond the bounds of the individual and represents the return of 
the first beginnings of our species, in which everyone must begin 
afresh as a child ; these early conditions are withdrawn from 
consciousness with the progressive adaptation to civilization but 
never destroyed or rendered of no effect. Hidden by the super- 
structure of the higher mental life, the unconscious nevertheless 
remains alive and represents, since it comprises within itself 
simultaneously the past of the individual and that of the species, 
the universal human of the personality, the connection which 
binds the most highly developed, as well as those who have 
lagged behind, to the whole. 



82 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

This hypothesis, rendered possible by psychoanalysis, is noth- 
ing else than a transference of the socalled biogenetic principle 
put forward by Hackel, according to which, the individual re- 
peats in the mental life the mode of development of the species. 
The question is at hand, why psychoanalysis should be indis- 
pensable to such an hypothesis since the fundamental observation 
of the child's mental life seems to suffice for it. To this it may 
be replied that the stages, most important in this respect, have 
already been passed through when the child has become capable 
of clear expression and thereby become a suitable object for 
study. By far the most important facts can be confirmed only 
by inference from the remains of that early time, which have per- 
sisted in the unconscious ; that is, by the case given and tested by 
psychoanalysis by means of an observation of the child sharpened 
by this experience. Furthermore, the child's mental life is, in no 
way, thoroughly understood at later stages as yet, as the general 
error of judgment in the question of sexuality of children shows. 
Only with psychoanalysis has the unprejudiced observation of 
the child begun, since the investigator who is not familiar with 
his own repression is scarcely in a position to see in its true light 
the mental condition of the child, which is wholly or in part free 
from repression. 

An important support for the phylogenetic hypothesis here 
developed lies in the fact that the parallelism in certain cases 
does not limit itself merely to the inner life, but also makes its 
appearance in external things. We refer to some of the typical 
symptoms of the neurotic, especially the sufferer from the ob- 
sessional neurosis, which exactly repeat the superstitious cus- 
toms of primitive peoples. Both the regulations applying to the 
conduct of savages and the impulses underlying the symptoms 
were completely unintelligible, both to the persons who acted 
under the influence of these, and to the investigator studying 
them. Psychoanalysis traces both phenomena back to the same 
source, namely, the unconscious, under the sway of which the 
neurotic and the primitive man stand in far higher degree than 
the normal civilized man. 

Thus, there corresponds, for example, to the frequently ob- 
served neurotic fear of clear ringing sounds, pointed objects 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 83 

and the like, a taboo command which forbids the keeping of 
weapons in inhabited places; the obsessional idea that the death 
of a man could be caused by his own evil wishes, is repeated in 
the belief in the possibility of injuring an enemy by magical for- 
mulae; the joy-destroying grief of the neurotic for a beloved 
person finds expression 42 in the anxiety of the savage lest the 
departed return as hostile demons ; as the relations of the neu- 
rotic to the persons important to him vary between immeasur- 
able love and immeasurable hate, so also the savage has an am- 
bivalent attitude toward certain persons who are especially im- 
portant for him, in particular toward his ruler and those of dif- 
ferent family, so that there is exhibited toward them, now, the 
most devoted reverence, now, the most pitiless hostility ; espe- 
cially, however, do the countless strict regulations which would 
prevent an undisturbed dwelling together of the family members 
of opposite sexes — mother and son, mother-in-law and son-in- 
law, brother and sister — make plain that there exists in the 
savage, the exaggerated anxiety over incest so important for the 
etiology of the neurosis, which is to be explained only by a most 
intense temptation to incest. 

Thus the complexes which disturb the family life of the 
neurotic also play a role in the primitive family, which fact is im- 
portant from the standpoint of the history of civilization. 

The parallel between psychic onto- and phylo-genesis is more 
than an interesting observation ; in numerous cases it can be 
demonstrated that what psychoanalysis has shown to be the im- 
portant factor of the individual development has also been of 
great importance for the cultural development, and therefore, if 
intelligently applied, can contribute to the solution of the most 
difficult ethnological problems. Of course, progress must be 
made cautiously and the diversity of the material given proper 
consideration. The greatest part of the development of hu- 
manity was occasioned from within outward, by the masses of 
energy gained from mental sources, somewhat like the establish- 
ment of the taboo-prohibition with its ethical, religious and 
esthetic results, together with the structures which were created 
as compensation for the renunciation imposed by this prohibi- 

42 " Every dead person is a vampire, the unloved ones excepted." 
Friedrich Hebbel, Diary of Jan. 31, 1831. 



84 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tion. But this development, is extraordinarily strongly influenced 
by external circumstances, now hastened, now retarded, many 
times even directed into entirely different courses. The agencies 
determining the manner in which the external world exerts its 
influence are often fundamentally different, both in individual 
development and manner of development. Thus, for example, 
the creation of fire has been a most highly important act not 
only for the physical conditions of existence but also, indirectly, 
for the psychic conditions. We may assume — and the traces of 
memory preserved in ethnology also prove it — that this activity, 
eminently important for the primitive man, was suitable to set 
free in him great quantities of affects and resulted in corre- 
sponding displacements of his libido toward the outer world. 
After this new kind of discharge of affect had firmly established 
itself on the basis of the great practical advantage connected 
with it, the mental economy could be placed on a new basis. 
Likewise, the introduction of agriculture brought with itself a 
mental revolution. The right to plough up mother earth and 
fertilize her, brought about the downfall of countless taboo pro- 
hibitions which narrowed life, a proof that alongside and by 
means of this progress in external culture humanity knew how to 
gain a bit of internal freedom which had previously been with- 
held. The knowledge of the creation of fire and the practice of 
agriculture can scarcely exercise on the mental life of our chil- 
dren a similar revolutionary influence, hence these activities have 
significance for our unconscious only in their sexual symbolism 
which may represent a final remnant of their one-time phylo- 
genetic value. 

These circumstances which disturb the parallelism are to be 
taken into close consideration in the application of the psycho- 
analytic method and results to ethnology; whoever attempts, 
without giving them proper consideration, to make a smooth 
transference from the one series to the other, will be unable to 
make his accounts agree. It would be very unjust to blame 
psychoanalysis for this, or turning the tables, to assert that this 
or that fundamental principle of psychoanalysis was incorrect 
because it could not be applied immediately to the early history 
of humanity. For psychoanalysis, the investigations begun in 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 85 

this field are of extraordinary value as a test of its validity and 
as substantiation of the much disputed theses enunciated by it. 
Its real conclusive force rests first and last on the individual 
psychological material in which it may never be contradicted. If 
its applicability in other sciences is thereby rendered difficult, 
still this is to be considered a necessary consequence of the 
different manner of arranging the material which demands a 
special method. An " Open Sesame " by which, without care or 
pains, all doors are opened, psychoanalysis is not. 

In close connection with the above deductions, stands the 
question, whether one has to so conceive of phylogenetic paral- 
lelism that, as a result of a law still unknown to us, all the stages 
of mental development of the race are contained in the indi- 
dual, from the beginning, as dispositions, from which disposi- 
tions, with the progress of organic development, as one might 
say automatically, the stages of mental development make their 
appearance, or whether, only for the reason that the same causes 
are working on the child as on primitive humanity — passage 
from pleasure to reality principle, animistic view of the world, 
incest limitations, etc. — the same results are brought about. It 
is evident that the answer to this question, which can be given 
with any certainty, only after the investigation of the whole 
problem has progressed quite far, cannot be demanded at the 
beginning of the inquiry. In any case, the first possibility, which 
goes still further and includes a series of other problems within 
itself, must for the present be laid aside as a working hypothesis. 

The traces of earlier mental life are preserved for us in an- 
other structure which exists in uninterrupted flow from the 
earliest times to our own day, and is of the highest, yes, most 
decisive value, for the mental life of humanity, namely, speech. 
Concerning the development of speech in the child, thus far, no 
investigation from the standpoint of psychoanalysis has been 
instituted. On the other hand, with reference to the great prob- 
lem of the origin of human speech, the philologist, Dr. Hans 
Sperber 43 has proposed an hypothesis which, without proceed- 
ing from psychoanalytic premises, completely agrees with the 

43 Imago, Part 5, 1912. " titer den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf 
Entstehung u. Entwicklung der Sprache" (concerning the influence of 
sexual agencies in the origin and development of speech). 



86 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

results of the psychoanalytic mode of thought. According to 
Sperber, for the discovery of the origin of speech, it is necessary 
to find those typical situations which earliest brought home to 
man the desire to influence another person in the direction of his 
wishes by voluntary sounds. Of such situations, there are only 
two : the child who lacks nourishment, and the sexually excited 
man ; these two persons will perceive that the cries emitted by 
them, at first in purely reflex manner, call to them a person, 
whose presence they wish, and will learn from that, to repeat 
these cries intentionally when they want the person in question 
near them. From the case of the child, who calls his mother, 
no way leads to speech formation ; easily, however, from the 
sexual call. The first activities of primitive man are really sub- 
stitutes for the sexual act for him, hence, he will utter the same 
call, for example, in lighting a fire, and when he has once learned 
the efficacy of this, he will invite to participation in this latter 
activity by it. Later, the same sequence of sounds is used in 
general, only in the derivative sense, since the younger genera- 
tion learns to use them before the reproductive instinct awakens 
in it. Then, if after the lapse of centuries, there came the dis- 
covery of a new activity, as digging or hammering, another 
sexual call which had become fixed in the meantime now passed 
over to the new discovery. Thus is explained the origin of 
many primitive verb-roots, with which the beginning of speech 
is filled. In reference to the substantives, it may only be pointed 
out in brief that the most important division which we make 
to-day, namely, according to gender, indicates how much in all 
things the relations to the sexual characteristics were con- 
sidered. 44 

It agrees exceedingly well with Sperber's hypothesis that in 
most languages the roots for the names of the primitive forms of 
activity : to light a fire, to dig, to plough, etc., have the secondary 
meaning, to practice coitus. Since speech formation can be only 
so conceived that some few primitive forms (roots) assume a 
series of meanings and in the course of time become varied by 

44 Erich Schmidt calls astonishing the instinct of children of nature 
for sexual distinctions, which is extended beyond man and animals, to 
sensual personification of all phenomena (Schlesinger, Geschichte des 
Symbols, p. 417). 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 87 

addition of cultural forms, it may be considered as proven that 
those roots which were best adapted to the change in meaning 
were the most suitable for speech formation and these are, as 
we have seen, the sexual. Roots with originally non-sexual sig- 
nificance, which appear in later stages, will gain a great capa- 
bility for extension from the fact that they have passed through 
the sexual sphere of ideas. 

From a stem with the meaning vulva we find, for example, 
derivatives which serve to denote such slightly related ideas as 
baker's ware, ragged piece of clothing, vessel and others. Thus, 
middle high German " Kotze " for vulva, also means prostitute, 
and finally, coarse woolen goods, kotze, pack-basket. To this 
category belong Alsatian " Kutt," the posteriors, Bavarian 
"Kutz," intestines, Thuringian " Kuttel," sack (from which 
"Kutte," a piece of clothing of shape of sack), English "cod" 
cushion (Old Danish kodde) and the "Kutt" found in many 
German dialects, ditch. With this list, the derivatives are not 
by any means exhausted : Swiss " chutz," owl, then " Kotz," 
tuft of flowers, Swedish "Kotte," the round spike of flowers 
of the pine tree, Old High German "chutti," agmen, Dutch 
"kudde," grex. In addition, a large number of these words 
have also kept the old meaning of vulva. 

If the importance of a group of ideas for the speech forma- 
tion depends on the fact that derivatives from the expressions 
taken therefrom may easily come into use in other, very nu- 
merous and most widely separated fields, then theoretically, we 
are justified in saying that this field is sexuality. The uni- 
versal tendency to obtain a secondary gain of pleasure in every 
action directed toward a practical end, can be presupposed. This 
would be best brought about in every case when it succeeded in 
finding for such an activity a similarity with an activity not di- 
rected toward practical ends, but only toward pleasurable grati- 
fication ; if this result was attained, it would be retained and con- 
stantly emphasized anew, so that to the unpleasant practical ac- 
tivity would be fastened the name of another pleasant one, and 
thus sanction the substitution of the one for the other by name. 
Of such kind of pleasurably toned activities, there are only two 
for primitive men, namely the satisfying of the hunger and the 



88 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

sexual instincts; while the satisfaction of the hunger instinct is 
an act which is carried out in a most simple and stereotyped 
manner, and scarcely affords the ground for numerous analogies, 
and which, in the beginning, completely lacked the social charac- 
teristic, the case with the sexual instinct is far more favorable. 
Another very important circumstance is the fact that to the 
hunger instinct which is served only by immediate real gratifi- 
cation, the world of phantasy stands immensely farther away 
than to the sexual instinct. Finally, the deeper reason for the 
preference of this latter lies in the repression which meets it the 
very first thing, adding a dynamic agency which is completely 
lacking to the hunger instinct. Since man, as a result of the 
erection of incest barriers and other cultural demands, had to 
renounce in great part the previously customary sexual gratifi- 
cation, there became disposable in him a considerable quantity 
of libido for which he no longer found use. The feeling of dis- 
comfort which arose from this damming back of libido caused 
him to utilize every opportunity for releasing it, that is, he 
sexualized his surrounding world and especially his own ac- 
tivities. While, thus, the creation of an analogy with the satis- 
faction of the hunger instinct, aside from its greater difficulty, 
afforded merely a positive premium of pleasure, the sexualiza- 
tion could act still more beneficently by lessening the discomfort 
from tension. 

The complete counterpart of this original manner of develop- 
ment may be observed in higher stages of civilization and with 
more intensive repression. When the frank designation of sexual 
matters begins to act as causing shame and therefore discom- 
fort, a substitution is interposed in its place, for example, in- 
stead of the word for vagina, one for the mouth or another 
harmless bodily opening, or for the reproductive act, some kind 
of work. This comparative method of designation often ac- 
quires in time by constant application for the same purpose the 
sexual meaning itself. Thus, by this process, words which were 
originally harmless, are changed into sexual ones, while the 
primitive development consists in an expression, customarily 
used for sexual things, expanding by change of meaning to the 
name for a culturally important business or implement. By the 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 89 

changing power of attraction and repulsion of sexuality, a part 
of the development of speech is kept in constant flux. 

Also, aside from the relations to sexuality, the knowledge of 
the unconscious is of highest value for the comprehension of 
the origin and earliest development of speech, because therein 
are preserved those primitive forms of thinking which took part 
in the first attempts at speech formation. In the internal con- 
nection which exists between thought and speech, an hypothesis 
can scarcely be proposed concerning its genesis, if no definite 
idea has been formed of the manner of thought of primitive 
men, which was always very different from that of the present. 

The influence of some mental mechanisms belonging to the 
unconscious may be asserted to-day, although we stand only at 
the beginning of the investigations dealing with it. Thus, there 
belongs to the previously mentioned attributes of the uncon- 
scious the peculiarity that the feeling for the incompatibility of 
opposites starts from it; indeed that it delights to link these to- 
gether, even when they are diametrically opposed. Many dec- 
ades ago, this same peculiarity was maintained by an eminent 
philologist 45 as a constant peculiarity of the oldest languages ; 
these languages designate many contrasting pairs by the same 
expression, which only later divides into two different words 
with contrasting meanings. Thus, the word " taboo," used many 
times by us, and the Hebrew word of same meaning, " kodausch," 
as well as the Latin, " sacer," have the simultaneous meanings 
of " sacred " and " uncanny," " accursed." 

The capability for abstract and conceptual thinking developed 
only slowly and was certainly present in the early stages of the 
development of speech only in rudimentary form. To the ques- 
tion, with what forms of thought the primitive men may have 
worked, where the terms were lacking to them, analogy with the 
unconscious likewise affords us a conclusion. The unconscious 
is also unfamiliar with the formulation of a concept, hence it 
utilizes to wide extent another more obvious means, in order to 
establish mentally, at least in some measure, the peculiarity and 
connection of things, namely, symbolism. Thus, two ideas widely 
separated in our thought may be very closely joined in the un- 
conscious mental life, and in that of primitive people, by the 

45 Karl Abel, tiber den Gegensinn der Urworte, Leipsic, 1884. 



90 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

fact that both are used as symbol for the same represented ob- 
ject, or that one of the two corresponded to the represented ob- 
ject itself, the other to the representing symbol. 46 This possi- 
bility, etymology, in investigating the oldest derivatives, should 
constantly take into consideration. Numerous symbols are uni- 
versally familiar from their application in folklore and art. 
Etymology already makes use of these and psychoanalysis need 
only call attention to their especial significance in the uncon- 
scious mental life as a hitherto unknown factor. Other symbols, 
and just those which are most characteristic of the primitive 
mental life, lost their relations to conscious comprehension and 
disappeared almost completely from those forms of symbolic 
application which are calculated for reception by another one. 
They withdrew to those kinds of expression of the unconscious 
which are glad to escape comprehension, as is the case especially 
in the dream. The symbols of this group may, in general, only 
be comprehended by deep investigation of the unconscious, and 
hence, for the etymological estimation of them, a knowledge of 
psychoanalysis is an indispensable condition. 

We must cast a hasty glance over the material of speech, the 
sound formation. For the child, the joining together of articu- 
lated sounds, which it little by little learns to control, is some- 
thing independent, which the child prefers to distinguish from 
the things denoted, since he may much easier subject these 
sounds to his own will than the things themselves. The child 
is, therefore, inclined to misunderstand the connection between a 
thing and its name, which it cannot quite grasp intellectually, so 
that he takes the name for the thing, regarding it as a substitute 
for the thing itself. Something similar we find among primitive 
men, who are of the opinion that one has a certain power over a 
thing if one knows its name. On this rests the inclination to 
euphemism, namely, among names of people and names of places ; 
numerous remains of this belief occur in myths and legends. 

It is a result of this error that in childish and also in primi- 
tive thought the assumption prevails that to the similarity of 
name a material connection must also correspond. The clang 
association, in this stage of mentality, easily takes the place of 

46 According to Gerber (Die Sprache der Kunst, 1885) the roots were 
created in the stage of unconscious symbolism. 



ETHNOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 91 

the actual relation ; also, in the unconscious, the same is the case ; 
This is very plain in the dream work, which delights in deriving 
connections from clang associations, with disregard of the con- 
nection in content. For the origin of speech, the tendency, 
which appears in dreams, of bringing into connection the simi- 
larity of the thing with the similarity of the sound of the name, 
is of preeminent importance. 47 

An analogy to this mechanism is afforded us by the origin 
of writing. Of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, we at least know 
definitely that the gradual transformation from a consecutive 
series of pictures to a sound writing took its origin from the 
circumstance that one applied definite signs, not only for the ob- 
jects which they represented, but also for other objects with 
which they possessed absolutely no internal or external relation- 
ship, except that the names of these had the same or similar 
wording. Thus, they utilized not the basis of the material as- 
sociation but that of the clang association. For example, son is 
represented by the picture of the goose, because both words sound 
somewhat alike; judge, one writes as wolf, because both bore the 
name " seb." 4S The interpretation of Horapollon, who sought to 
represent, at any cost, relations of content as the underlying ones, 
led to the same nonsense as would result from a dream interpre- 
tation which should make use of the same technique. 

Obviously, psychoanalysis comes into consideration only for 
the origin of language and etymology. In this, there is no over- 
looking of the importance of the higher development and still 
less depreciation of philology devoted to its study. From the 
standpoint of our consideration, nevertheless, these stages come 

47 " Between the word and its object comes the picture and, by chance, 
signifies like-sounding objects between which no other connection than a 
phonetic and sound symbolism exists. Where different words agree in 
sound, they deceive the people, so that it assumes a like relation. This 
belief in the relationship of sounds and their double meaning has a share 
in the formation of the Greek religion." Welcker (Griech. Gotterlehre, 
1857). 

48 Die Hierglyphen, by Prof. Dr. A. Ermann, Sammlung Goschen, No. 
608. According to Conrady, this naming by means of the " sound rebus " 
was also the rule in other related picture writings, like the Chinese and 
Sumerian (Veroffentlichungen des stadt. Museums fur Volkerkunde in 
Leipsig, 1907, Pt. 1, Introduction). 



92 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

into consideration only as secondary elaboration of the primitive 
mental material, for our task is limited to explaining the in- 
fluence of the unconscious on speech formation in the funda- 
mental characteristics and calling attention to how much is to 
be gained for the science of language by the attainment of a 
better insight into this problem. 



CHAPTER V 
Esthetics and Psychology of the Artist 

The possibility of a psychological understanding is always 
^.easier in poetry than in any other field of art. We would, there- 
fore, keep this constantly in mind with our esthetic considerations 
and only occasionally touch upon other kinds of art. 

If we propose two fundamental esthetic questions, namely, 
what kind of enjoyment a work of the art of poetry affords, and 
in what way it accomplishes this, the first deliberation shows con- 
tradictions, which can scarcely be solved so long as the considera- 
tion remains limited to the processes of consciousness. For to the 
first question, we must answer that the content of poems is in 
great part suited to arouse in us painful affects : calamity and sor- 
row, the suffering and downfall of noble men are, for tragedy, 
the only themes, for the epic, the romance, the novel, the most 
frequent ones; also, where cheerfulness should be awakened, that 
is only possible when misunderstandings or accidents bring the 
persons for awhile into difficult and unpleasant situations. But 
we find the acme of the pleasure from art, where a work almost 
takes our breath away, and causes the hair to stand on end from 
fear, so as finally to call forth tears of deepest suffering and 
sympathy. All these are feelings from which we flee in life and 
strangely enough seek in art. The effects of these affects are 
plainly of quite a different character when they proceed from a 
work of art than otherwise, although they are received by con- 
sciousness as the same; hence, this esthetic alteration of the 
affective effect, from painful to pleasurable, is a problem in 
which we may expect assistance from the knowledge of the un- 
conscious mental life. 

This changed relationship in our affects can in no way be 
explained by the mere fact that the observer or auditor knows 
that not reality but only make-believe stands before him. In 
this way, we may understand why facts which would affect us 
painfully if they were true, happening in this make-believe world, 

93 



94 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

make us cheerful, as was mentioned for comedy and related forms ; 
in the most essential cases however, we are dealing with some- 
thing quite different. The normal effects of these facts on our 
feelings are not altered by this failure of reality ; rather, they 
excite exactly the same affects, as fear, terror, horror, sympathy, 
etc., and are thus, at least at the moment of their activity, received 
entirely in earnest and placed on a par with the real ones. It is 
the affects themselves, which are differentiated from those aroused 
by reality, not in the cause of their origin, nor in the form of 
their expression, but rather by the sign of pleasure, inverted to 
its opposite, which is inappropriate to the content. 

With this explanation comes the answer to the second question. 
The chief means by which the poetic art achieves its effect is the 
peculiar condition into which the listener is transposed. As by 
suggestion, he is compelled to experience things which are related 
to him of another, that is, to transpose them into subjective reality, 
jn doing which, however, he never completely loses the knowledge 
of the correct relation of things. The degree of deception which 
may be attained is different in every kind of art and conforms to 
the suggestive means which are employed. These means are, in 
part, determined from within by the material, in part, are tech- 
nical aids, which have developed in time to typical forms and rep- 
resent the inheritance from earlier generations which lie ready 
for the creating artist. On the other hand, those arrangements, 
in which the illusion may be attained by direct imitation of reality, 
like those in use on the modern stage, do not belong here, because 
they have nothing to do with the essence of poetic art. With the 
two others, we will deal later. 

We dwell next upon the peculiar middle position, in which 
everyone is transposed, on whom a work of poetic art exercises the 
full and correct effect. He will feel the truth of this work, know 
its falsehood, without this continual alternation, which ought to 
arouse the most painful indecision, troubling him in the least. 
When we draw the comparison with other phantasy products, 
especially with the dream, which is often placed parallel to poetry, 
we find that in the latter the deception is complete. Aside from 
an exceptional case with special basis (the feeling of dream 
within a dream), the dreamer believes, even to the end, in the 
reality of the processes. That the insane patient puts his de- 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 95 

lusional structures in place of reality is well known. But when 
we keep in mind the immediate precursors of poetry, the myths, 
we find the same phenomenon. Man of the myth-forming ages, 
which are still by no means entirely past on our earth, believes in 
his pictures of phantasy, and may occasionally regard them as 
objects of the external world. That the poetic art is no longer 
able to do the same completely for us indicates a lowering of its 
function, to which its lessened hold within our social status cor- 
responds ; that it is partially effctive makes it the last and strong- 
est comforter of humanity, which finds the entrance to the old 
buried sources of pleasure becoming ever more difficult. 

The phantasy formation, to which the poetic work in this, as in 
many other respects, stands nearest, is the so-called day-dream, 
to which practically all people occasionally yield; especially be- 
fore and during puberty does it assume a large place and keen 
significance in the inner life. The day-dreamer can gain from 
these phantasies a considerable amount of pleasure without be- 
lieving in the real existence of the dreamed situations. Other 
characteristic marks separate these products sharply from the 
work of art: the day-dream is without form or rule, it knows no 
aid, which, as we have seen, the work of art uses to attain its 
suggestive effect, and can easily get along without this, since it 
is not calculated for effect on others, but is purely egocentric. 
Therefore, we may find again in the day-dream the inversion of the 
affective effect, which seems so puzzling to us in the work of art, 
but of course not in the same amount. Mostly, situations which 
are pleasant to the dreamer, fulfilling his conscious wishes, form 
the content of the day-dream; especially, such things as the 
gratification of ambition by immense success, as marshal of the 
army, statesman or artist, then the attainment of the object of 
his love, the satisfaction of his vengeance for the injury done 
him by one more powerful than himself, does the day-dreamer 
paint in all their fulness. Among these appear also, though less 
often, situations which in reality would have been highly painful ; 
these, however, the day-dreamer carries out and repeats with the 
same pleasure. The most frequent type is the phantasy of his 
own death and also of other suffering and misfortune: poverty, 
sickness, imprisonment and disgrace are often represented; not 
less often, also, the idea of the perpetration of infamous crime and 
the discovery of the same. 



96 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

We will not be surprised to find that the average man, as day- 
dreamer, finds the same enjoyment in the production of such 
phantasies as the hearer of a poem in its reception. Both func- 
tions are in essential aspects identical, in so far as the reception 
of a phantasy consists only in the fact that it is experienced. The 
presupposition for the possibility of this circumstance, is, of 
course, that there be present in those receiving it the same tenden- 
cies, for the gratification of which the phantasy was created. The 
first requisite for a work of art that is destined to exert influence 
beyond the limitations of time and space, is therefore its universal 
human foundation. Now, among the similar fundamental in- 
stinctive tendencies of humanity, the day-dream can scarcely 
lack such a basis entirely ; the distinction lies in the fact that the 
common human traits, by which a sympathetic feeling for another 
is possible, appear in the phantasy of the artist without his inter- 
ference and assume the guidance, while with the day-dreamer they 
are hidden by his most personal considerations in life. Thus, we 
see, to give an example, in the day-dream of the ambitious person, 
a man whose immense success would extort no interest from us, 
since the dream is satisfied with the fact and disdains every in- 
ternal introduction of motive, by which the case would be included 
in the universal psychic (material). In "Macbeth," we see also 
an ambitious person and his success but the premises are followed 
even to the roots of each ambition, so that everyone who has 
fostered ambitious wishes, must, irresistibly transported, feel the 
whole horror of the night of murder. 

Herein we perceive a hint toward the understanding of the 
suggestive power of the work of art, but to the problem of the 
inversion of the affective effect, we have not yet approached any 
nearer. To that problem, we can only find the solution, when we 
accept the help of the affect theory of psychoanalysis. This 
teaches that a very great amount of affect may remain uncon- 
scious, indeed, in certain cases must remain unconscious, without 
the pleasant or unpleasant effect of these affects, which neces- 
sarily belong to consciousness, being lost. The pleasure and dis- 
comfort so existing in consciousness is then attached to other 
affects, namely, to those belonging to the same ideas ; many a time 
this union succeeds so completely that nothing striking remains; 
very often, however, the pleasure or discomfort is inadequate for 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 97 

the affect — complex from which it seems to arise, or, as in our 
case, it is opposed. The pathological examples of immensely strong 
expressions of joy or grief on apparently insignificant occasions 
are well known. The foundation of the thing is, of course, more 
complicated than it has thus far been represented. Without fur- 
ther explanation, it is not correct to say that the pleasure set 
free by the unconscious affects is annexed to favorite representa- 
tives. This would contradict the strong determination in mental 
affairs and produce the erroneous presupposition that an affect, 
excluded from consciousness, would renounce its success. 
Rather, those ideas and affects which are capable of being con- 
scious, which now work with so strong gain of pleasure and dis- 
comfort, are nothing else than the servants and substitute forma- 
tions of the original, but now repressed, affects. Between these 
two, a close associative connection must be demonstrable and on 
the path prepared by this association, the pleasure shifts and the 
fund of energy belonging to it also. 

If this theory is correct, then its application to our problem 
must be possible, and would have to run something like this : By 
the work of art there are aroused, besides the conscious affects, 
also unconscious ones, of much greater intensity and often of op- 
posite pleasure phase. The ideas by the help of which this hap- 
pens must be so chosen that they possess, besides the connections 
present before the testing consciousness, also sufficient associations 
with the typical unconscious constellations of affect. In order to 
be chosen for this complicated task, the work of art must be so 
constituted that it will perform in its origin for the mental life 
of the artist, what it performs at its reproduction for the hearer, 
namely, the discharge and gratification by phantasy of the uncon- 
scious wishes common to both. 

It must be remembered here, what was said in the first chap- 
ter concerning resistance and censor, and the necessity of dis- 
guises (distortion) connected with these. The undisguised pres- 
entation of the unconscious would call forth the whole defence 
of the social, moral and esthetic personality, thus arouse, not 
pleasure but anxiety, disgust and horror. Poetry, therefore, 
makes the most extensive use of all those masks and means of rep- 
resentation — transposition of motive, inversion to the opposite, 
weakening of the connection, splitting of a figure into several, 

8 



98 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

duplication of processes, condensation of material and especially 
of symbolism. Thus, there arises from the repressed wish-phan- 
tasies, which, being typical, must necessarily remain limited to a 
few, and the oftener repeated, so much the more uniform, the 
endless, never to be exhausted variety of the work of art. This 
variety is assured by the individual variation and also by the 
varying intensity of the repression which with the change of 
cultural epochs, directs its strongest resistance now against one, 
now against some other bit of the unconscious. 

The conflict between repression and unconscious finds in the 
work of art, as in a compromise formation, a temporary accommo- 
dation. The unconscious succeeds in breaking through without 
the necessity for a direct attack upon the barriers of the censor, 
which are rather circumvented in clever manner. To be sure, 
the conflict is not removed from the world by this circumven- 
tion, that is shown by the frequent inverted signs of pleasure, with 
which the phantasies appear before consciousness. Even in the 
disguise, a painful characteristic adheres to the longed-for situa- 
tions which marks them as ghosts, rising from the haunts of the 
unconscious. To make this trait, able to raise the enjoyment 
of art, is now woven into the work of art, while the con- 
scious connection is so united that the chief situations readily 
assume the character of sad, fearful, forbidden; especially in 
tragedy is this regularly the case, and in it, further, the purifica- 
tion of the soul of the hearer is most completely attained. That 
most works of poetic art awaken sorrowful affects in our con- 
sciousness is thus no contradiction to their pleasure-giving func- 
tion, as we might think at first, but a confirmation of it; for on 
the one hand, the unpleasant affects in consciousness are employed 
and placed in the service of the artistic form, on the other hand, 
the forbidden pleasure, nourished from unconscious sources, is 
enjoyed under the mask of the foreign affect without offending 
the censor. 49 

The capability to create pleasure from painful affects and the 
emphasis of poetry on the ideas belonging to these affects, which 

49 " I have often said and will never recede from it : the representation 
kills that which is represented, first in the representor himself, who brings 
under his feet in this way what had hitherto made him act, then further- 
more for those who enjoy it." — Friedrich Hebbel. 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 99 

is rendered possible in this way, must, however, have still a second 
root, for the day-dream, which is unable to place the uncon- 
scious in the service of the artistic tension, utilizes it likewise, 
even though less often than the work of art. As a matter of fact, 
a primary gain of pleasure may be derived from these phantasies 
of suffering. We know already that there belongs to the infantile 
instinctive tendencies which may not be quite eliminated in the 
sexual activity of the adult, also the sexual pleasure of inflicting 
and enduring pain (sadism-masochism). In the day-dream, 
where the gratification of these infantile tendencies is connected 
neither with physical pain nor with evil social results, they also 
find after complete repression their foster home and from there, 
wander over into the work of art where they are received and 
utilized for its secondary tendencies. 

It is an important factor, also, that the esthetic enjoyment 
occurs entirely aside from the acting and achieving ego situated 
in reality. Thereby it is made possible for the hearer to identify 
himself with any feeling or with any figure without hesitation and 
to always give up this incorporation again without trouble. In 
this sense, the command "L'art pour l'art" has its full justifica- 
tion, since the work of art with a purpose, by which the author 
and his public constitute themselves, a. priori, in favor of certain 
opinions and figures, so that for their opponents there remains 
only refusal, may not bring all sides of the mental life into play. 
In such cases, a remnant of the relation to reality remains missing 
which clips the wings of the phantasy. Only he who loses him- 
self completely in a work of art can feel its deepest affect and 
for this end, complete turning away from present aims is 
necessary. 

There still remains for us, the consideration of the means of 
the esthetic effect, which we have divided above into internal and 
individual on one side, and external and technical, on the other. 
To the first category, belongs, preeminently, the basic principle 
of economy in the distribution of affect. In order to call forth a 
stronger impression with the work of art than would be possible 
in an actual occurrence or in a day-dream, a structure is necessary 
which does not allow the affect to flatten out immediately, and 
uselessly, but raises it slowly and regularly from one stage to the 



100 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

next, until the highest degree is attained, and the affect is then 
abreacted as quickly as possible. The " internal form of art," 
which compels the artist to choose a different kind of treatment 
for each material, is nothing else than the unconscious insight 
into how the maximum amount of affect, which may be produced 
by the object, would be attained by the proper alternation between 
progress and retardation. According to this insight, the artist 
will then treat the material as tragedy, epic, novel or ballad, and 
further, adapt the means to the variety exactly according to the 
aim. The economy of affect is just that mark of genius, by the 
aid of which the latter produces the strongest effects, while 
against its rules the most beautiful declamation and the most 
brilliant acting produce no deep impression. 

Besides the economy of affect, there stands, in second place, 
the economy of thought, in favor of which, in the work of art, 
everything which happens must be given a motive, according to 
strict rules and without gaps, while real life, with its gay and 
tumultuous instincts, leaves in our hands, only here and there, 
the tattered shreds of a motive. In the poem, the thread of ac- 
tion can never break unaided, the course of events within the 
work is completely visible and according to the principle of suffi- 
cient reason for understanding without addition, that is, our laws 
of thought must not assert themselves painfully against the 
outer world, but find a world before them, which is harmoniously 
constructed according to their rules. The result of this is that 
the connections of the work of art are understood without effort, 
without the trains of thought and the facts crossing each other; 
the economy of thought is the cause of the phenomenon that, 
for the reception of the work of art, immensely less expenditure 
of energy is necessary than for the reception of a bit of the 
outer world of same extent ; the result of this saving of strength 
is a gain in pleasure. By the assistance which the economy of 
thought still further affords, for example, by means of the in- 
troduction of a consequent parallelism or the arrangement, side 
by side, of sharp contrasts in motives, processes and figures, this 
gain of pleasure can be increased. 

It may now be seen that at this point the narrower esthetic 
problems begin which can in great part be brought nearer to 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST IOI 

solution by the application of these fundamental principles to 
definite groups and families. Into these problems we may not go 
and, therefore, turn to the external means of art ; these consist, 
since speech is the medium of poetry, in clang effects which we 
can divide into two groups : rhythm and rhyme. 

Rhyme has existed in various forms as alliteration, initial 
rhyme, internal rhyme, etc., until it has become fixed for our 
circle of culture as end rhyme. The foundations of the pleasur- 
able effect are common to all ; the repetition of the same syllable 
causes a saving of attention and this just at the time when the 
rhyming word is both times essential for the sense, and no mere 
expletive ; the exertion of force, for which one must be prepared 
and which suddenly becomes superfluous, is transformed into 
pleasure by the repeated recognition of the same thing. On the 
other hand, the play with words, whereby the real importance is 
apportioned to the sound and on which the associative connection 
is built, is a source of childish pleasure which is thus reawakened 
by the rhyme for the domain of art. 

Rhythm was already known and used in primitive stages of 
culture as a means of facilitating labor; this function it has 
retained and it serves where the overcoming of real resistances 
remains outside of consideration, besides our case, for example, 
also in the dance and children's play for direct gaining of pleas- 
ure or increase of pleasure. Still it is to be added that the most 
important forms of sexual activity, especially the " pleasure suck- 
ing " of the child, then further of the sexual act itself are 
rhythmical from physiological reasons. By the introduction of 
rhythm during a definite action, the same is thus rendered similar 
to the sexual processes, sexualized. Hence the pleasure in 
rhythm has probably, outside of the motive of economy of work, 
also an equally important sexual root. 

What is said here of the work of art is founded on the inves- 
tigation which Freud has instituted in the problem of wit. Wit, 
too, serves the unpunished gratification of unconscious tendencies. 
In order to win favor with the listener for its content, wit, too, 
can utilize the childish pleasure in rhyme, which is occasionally 
carried to the extreme of apparent nonsense of words. All those 
kinds of aids, such as in poetry, the artistic form demanded by 



102 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

economy of affect and of thought, then rhyme and rhythm, serve 
as forepleasure. That is, they afford the hearer a premium of 
easily attained pleasure and thus entice from him his first interest. 
By means of a chain of such pleasure premiums, a psychic ten- 
sion is produced and gradually strengthened that causes the 
listener to perform the exertions which the reception of the 
work demand of his power of imagination, to overcome his resist- 
ances until the endpleasure in which the discharge of the affects 
and the relief of the tension is attained. To the superficial ob- 
server, the whole sum of pleasure which a work of art awakens 
seems to be created by the means which serve to call forth the 
forepleasure; but in reality, they form only the facade, behind 
which the real pleasure arising from the unconscious is hidden. 

The mechanism of the " forepleasure " is not limited to these 
two cases. We have already made its acquaintance in following 
the course of development of sexuality ; there we saw the previ- 
ously independent partial instincts afford the forepleasure which 
spurs on to the attainment of the endpleasure (in sexual act). 
In addition, a similar arrangement may be shown in still other 
fields. 

The relationship with sexuality is not limited merely to ex- 
ternal affairs ; it is a common saying that the question " whether 
Hans will get his Gretel " is the chief theme of poetry, which is 
ever declaimed anew in countless variants, without the poet and 
public ever getting tired. That not only the material but also 
the creative force in art is preponderatingly sexual has been ex- 
pressed more than once in intuitive knowledge. Psychoanalysis 
must limit this view by substituting for the plainly sexual, the 
instinctive forces of the unconscious. If, in the unconscious 
also, the by far greatest significance falls on sexuality, still, it 
does not entirely fill out the same; on the other side, it should 
never be left out of consideration that the sexual springs, which 
psychoanalysis recognizes, must have a quite particular char- 
acteristic, namely, that of the unconscious. The conscious desire 
is not long satisfied with phantasy, it destroys the make-believe 
and strives toward gratification in reality ; upon the appearance 
of the latter, both the pleasure in creating of the artist, and the 
esthetic enjoyment of the audience, is removed and brought to 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST IO3 

naught. The unconscious desire does not distinguish between 
phantasy and reality, it estimates the events not according to 
whether they are objective facts or only subjective ideas, and to 
this peculiarity, it owes its ability to form the psychological basis 
for the structure of art. Especially is this true of the QEdipus 
complex, from the sublimated instinctive force of which the 
masterpieces of all times and peoples have been created; the 
traces of this fact are afforded by the more or less disguised 
representations of the CEdipus situation, which the analyst can 
always trace back again to the primitive type. Now, as in 
CEdipus himself, the deed is carried out in all grossness; now, 
again, inverted, the forbidden desire is consciously striven for, 
but expiated by the fact that the relationship turns out to be 
false (family romance) ; most frequently, the situation is weak- 
ened so that instead of the mother the stepmother, the wife of 
the ruler or another figure who betrays herself as the mother 
image only in the finer details enters and the figure of the hostile 
father undergoes a similar distortion. 

If we extend our observation to the art of painting, we easily 
find certain related traits. As a root of the inclination for paint- 
ing may be assumed, for example, the sublimation of the looking 
instinct (Schautrieb), especially strongly developed in the in- 
stinctive life of the individual. The pleasure from looking 
(Schaulust), in its most primitive form in the child, is joined to 
the first objects of pleasure, among which, the sexual, in the 
broader sense of psychoanalysis, assumes the first place. It is 
known that the representation of men, especially of the naked 
human body, long passed as the only task of the painter and 
sculptor. The landscape, enlivened by no figure, first appeared, 
only in more recent times, after a further increase of repression 
had sharpened the demands of the censor for a diversion from 
the original goal. Still it holds even to-day that the human body 
is the real and noblest subject which no painter may entirely 
neglect. The original fundamental interest which is repressed 
by civilized man may still be plainly recognized in the sublimated 
form. 

The place of the economy of thought is taken in the art of 
painting by the economy of vision. The ideal is to show the 



/ 



104 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

spectator every phenomenon, free from confusing accidental 
peculiarities, in the form which is essential and most character- 
istic for the artistic effect, as it presents itself to the soul of the 
artist, thereby sparing the observer the trouble of separating that 
which is important for the impression from that nonessential. 

Still plainer than in the general foundations of the artistic 
creation is the connection with the unconscious in the production 
of the individual work. The fact that the conception of a work 
of art and the condition of mental elevation connected with it 
does not proceed from consciousness has been testified to by all, 
without exception, who were in a position to have experience on 
this point. The inspiration is a sudden comprehension of figures 
and connections, which were either entirely unknown to the artist 
himself until this moment or wavered before his mind in hazy 
indefinite form and now arranged themselves before him at a 
stroke, in vivid clearness. The mysterious part of this process 
has led to the assumption that the artist owed it to a heavenly 
inspiration which he cannot have created from his conscious- 
ness. Psychology has now for a long time been unable to 
dispense with an un- or sub-conscious in explanation, without, 
however, hitherto occupying itself with the nature of this force 
distant from consciousness, and submitting to itself the question 
whether the products of inspiration may not be determined by 
this force, so that one might learn from the investigation of their 
mutual characteristics something concerning the mental acts 
taking place beyond consciousness. 

The question, whence the artist gets the psychic material 
previously unknown to him, is not hard for psychoanalysis to 
answer. It is otherwise, of course, with the problem of the 
cause, by which the transition from conscious to unconscious is 
put into the work and the mechanism by which this transition is 
brought about. The fact that we are dealing with a flight from 
reality and with a regression to infantile sources of pleasure is 
the only fixed one. How the mode of utilization of this method 
differs from that which the neurotic prefers, for which exactly 
the same formula holds, is still little investigated. The question 
is just so much the more interesting, because the traits of both 
types very often mix, since the same man can be artist and 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST I05 

neurotic at the same time, thus caring for a part of his regres- 
sively gained pleasure by the medium of artistic inspiration and 
another part by means of neurotic symptoms. According to what 
fundamental principles the choice is made, whether, perhaps, the 
union of certain instincts with certain others is needed in order 
to become adapted for the one or the other method, on all these 
points later investigation must enlighten us. 

A fundamental distinction was already outlined in the first 
chapter. The neurosis makes it impossible for the associates of 
the patient to attribute a meaning to it. The symptoms produce 
the impression of arbitrariness and nonsense and are, further- 
more, certainly not suited to be felt by the relatives of the patient 
as pleasant or to bind strangers to him. The malady troubles and 
hinders the social relations of the neurotic. With the artist, the 
condition is essentially different. Indeed, the talent for art 
renders difficult the adaptation to the surroundings ; the examples 
of this, that artists as husbands and fathers, friends or citizens 
do not come up to the mark, need not be gone into in detail. It 
belongs to the fate of the artist that, right at the point, where he 
should act immediately through his personality, he mostly remains 
without results or is not understood ; still, he knows how to give 
a form to his works which finds, not only understanding, but 
calls forth deep pleasurable effects. Thus, by the fact that he 
withdraws himself to his infantile attitude, the neurotic loses 
his social connection, even though against his will, while the 
artist knows how to win back that which, for the same reasons, 
he must give up, in a new way, which is only passable for him. 
He sues for love and admiration, not in the ordinary manner, 
but in a more complicated and more spiritual manner, he cap- 
tures the others in the indirect way by the depths of his own 
personality. For the rest, enough exists in common to form the 
psychological foundation for the often observed similarity be- 
tween the artists on the one side, and the nervous and mental 
invalids, on the other, genius and insanity. 

The tendency to sudden changes of mood, the immoderation 
in love and hate and the incapacity for steady following of prac- 
tical ends, may be explained by the strengthened influence of the 
unconscious on the conscious and voluntary conduct of life. 



■> -— 1 .■«. o . -i f/ . - ■> ■■ » -* ■ «i iij •■ ■■ ifc :4.-^^m,. i «*. ~» - «^»f- 



106 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The constantly renewed upward pressure of primitive mental 
forces, which, if they succeeded in getting conrol, would burst 
asunder and desecrate all the bonds imposed by culture, creates 
a deep, lasting feeling of guilt, which transposes itself by 
"rationalization" into moral over-refinement; this latter occa- 
sionally changes again, with the consequent overstepping of 
ethical barriers. In general, uncompensated mental opposites 
are better endured in consciousness than by the average man, in 
whom likewise an assimilation to the unconscious mental life 
is to be seen, which does not stir up against each other the oppos- 
ing pairs, but allows them to exist side by side. 

To both types is common the high irritability or sensitiveness 
to irritation ; that is, they often react to very slight external 
stimuli with apparently an immeasurable and incomprehensible 
amount of affect. The cause of this characteristic lies in the 
fact that the possibility of a reaction from unconscious sources of 
affect is easily given as a result of an accidental disturbance of 
the association chains leading thither. 

The relation of the artist to the outer world is peculiar 
throughout, because the latter comes into consideration for him, 
not so much as playground for his passions, as instigation for his 
creative phantasy. For this, a very small amount of external 
experience suffices. Very often, the manner of work of the genius 
has caused wonder, that he should show in his works the closest 
knowledge of the human soul, in all its fulness and depth, before 
he could extend his observations beyond the smallest circle. The 
explanation lies in the fact that the human soul is infinitely 
greater than the circle which presents itself to consciousness. In 
the unconscious, lies buried the whole past of our race; it re- 
sembles a navel-string which binds the individual to the race. 
The greater the valuable part of the unconscious is, just so many 
more possibilities exist for the genius, divesting himself of his 
conscious ego, to change into strange personalities. If Shakes- 
peare saw, even to the bottom of the souls of wise men and fools, 
saints and criminals, he was not only unconscious of all this — 
which applies perhaps to everyone — but he possessed also, the 
other gift which we lack, of making his unconscious visible, while 
he allowed it to create apparently independent figures from his 



ESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTIST 107 

phantasy. These figures are all merely the poet's own uncon- 
scious, which he has put out, " projected," in order to free him- 
self from it. 

The artist can experience more in very small events than the 
average man in the gayest adventures, because they are only the 
occasion for him to become acquainted with his inner kingdom. 
His irritability is only the reverse side of the phenomenon and 
must appear, so far as he does not utilize this overflow for his 
work but chooses the everyday way of allowing his affects to 
discharge in reality. 

Finally, if we attempt to gain from the previous considera- 
tions a standpoint for the recognition of the importance of art 
in cultural development, then, we come to the conclusion that the 
artists belong to the leaders of humanity in the struggle for the 
taming and ennobling of the instincts hostile to culture. When 
one of the customary forms of expression becomes obsolete, that 
is, remains below the cultural level and stands in the way of 
ascent with its all too treacherous figure, then it is the individuals 
gifted with artistic creative force who make it possible for their 
fellow men to free themselves from the injurious instinct, without 
being compelled to renounce the pleasure, at the same time casting 
the old instinct in a new, unobjectionable, nobler form and putting 
this in the place of the old. Inversely, if the repression becomes 
superfluous in one place in its previous intensity, then the artists 
first feel the lessening of the pressure which bore heaviest on 
their spirits and utilizing the newly won freedom for art before 
it has yet come to pass in life, point out the way to their 
contemporaries. 



CHAPTER VI 
Philosophy, Ethics, Law 

f As philosophy has a quite special relation to the other sciences, 
so the psychoanalytic method of consideration occupies a special 

'■-.position toward philosophy. The disciplines previously treated, 
permit the analyst to fall back upon the object of these and dis- 
close in them in the more or less phantastic, unconscious share 
of scarcely-to-be-denied wish material, the entrance to the 
understanding of the phenomena and therewith the enrichment 
of the fields of knowledge in question. The philosophical sys- 
tems, on the contrary, meet us in the shape of material knowledge, 
with the claim to be judged as purely scientific and final explana- 
tions of the position of man in the outer world and in the universe. 
If this separation of philosophy seems, at first, to preclude 
every psychoanalytic entrance, still, two other prominent peculiar- 
ities in the consideration of the philosophical system and its cre- 
ators afford us an occasion for approaching the problem of philos- 
ophy and the philosopher. It must strike everyone at once that in 
philosophy, the personality of its creator appears in a measure 
that does not really exist in a science, and also, in no other field 
of knowledge except art. This circumstance induces us to eluci- 
date from the standpoint of psychoanalysis the peculiar psycho- 
logical structure of the philosopher, which raises him above the 
pure scientist and brings him nearer the type of the artist, yet 
still sharply differentiates him from the latter. With this eluci- 
dation is given us also a comprehension of an essential part of 
the system formation which is influenced, to a perceptible degree, 
by individual attributes of the personality, indeed, is often deter- 
mined by purely subjective agencies. The following of this indi- 
vidual set of conditions of the system, as far as the instinctive life 
and the fate of the libido, on the one side, and the exposure of its 
inner relations to character, personality and life influences, on the 
other, forms the task of a psychographic investigation as it is 

108 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW IO9 

beginning to develop from the application of psychoanalytic prin- 
ciples and viewpoints to the life and work of gifted minds. 

This method of investigation opens to us what one might call 
an inner door to the depths of personality, in the wish material 
underlying the system ; a series of philosophic systems affords the 
psychoanalytic investigation a broad field of attack upon the sys- 
tems themselves, in which the unconscious of their creators, which 
invests them with much of general validity, either as metaphysical 
projection into a transcendental world, or as mystical expression 
of endopsychic perception, or finally, directly in what you might 
call metapsychological knowledge, appears as object of philosoph- 
ical consideration. We would now discuss briefly and method- 
ically these different possibilities of an application of psycho- 
analytic viewpoints to the field of philosophy, beginning with the 
psychographic consideration of the philosophical personality, of 
which, we may, selecting the extreme forms, distinguish three 
chief types : 

1. The type of intuitive spectator, the real artistic metaphy- 
sician, as represented most truly by Plato and as plainly delineated 
in the Mystics and the closely related speculative natural philos- 
ophers ; 

2. The type of synthetic investigator, such as the systems of 
positivism of Comte, Spencer and even, in a certain degree, the 
empirical theory of Locke, presuppose; 

3. Finally the type of analytic thinker, as represented in sharp- 
est outlines by Kant and Spinoza and also by Descartes, Hume 
and others. 

These types are naturally, as our artificial arrangement of the 
systems among them shows, seldom to be encountered in pure 
form in individual cases, but still possess temporary value in the 
far more frequent mixed forms of these various traits shown in 
individual philosophers. 

The type of analytic thinker who proceeds preeminently from 
the certainty of the theory of knowledge which seeks to erect the 
foundations and bounds of conscious human knowledge will 
scarcely afford in his theories an object for psychoanalytic inves- 
tigation. The mingling of unconscious wish elements is, in far- 
reaching measure, excluded, since consciousness works in the self- 
knowledge of its own capabilities. With this type our interest 



110 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

is concentrated on the peculiar character formation and personal- 
ity which comes to expression therein, so that the philosopher, as 
shown in many places, seeks to shut himself from the practical 
and genial life, to keep himself free from the deceptive mingling 
of reality in his thought processes, as far as he may, in order 
to bring thought reality into play in extensive manner. 

The psychoanalytic study of the obsessional neurotic has af- 
forded a first understanding of these philosophical tendencies, 
as well as the relation to world and men, action and thinking, re- 
sulting from them, that is, to the limitation of action and over- 
growth of thought. These patients are not only closely related to 
the type of the philosopher by their own keen intelligence, their 
interest in transcendental things and their ethical scruples, but 
also betray to us further the narcissistic nature of self-examina- 
tion of their own thinking and the intensive sexualization of this, 
which tends ever farther away from the original sensual content 
of the ideas, to the pleasurable emphasizing of the thought proc- 
esses themselves. To the neurotic compulsion to subtle inquiry, 
to the pathological search for explanation, to the force-destroying 
doubt of the obsessional neurotic individual, there corresponds the 
philosophical admiration of otherwise unobserved phenomena, the 
logically motivated pedantic arrangement of thought according to 
the principle of symmetry, the strong need for causality that 
unites itself preferably to the deepest, insoluble problems of indi- 
vidual and cosmic design, which are enveloped in eternal doubt. 
All these traits reveal themselves to the psychoanalytic investiga- 
tion as the result of various fates of definite infantile instinctive 
tendencies and inclinations, among which the pleasure in looking 
(Schaulust) and the craving for knowledge, as well as the in- 
stinct for mastery, connected with cruel impulses, play the chief 
roles. In particular does the early and energetic repression, which 
the intensive sexual investigation of the child experiences from 
external and internal agencies, come into play in corresponding 
manifold ways. Either the desire for knowledge of the forbidden 
object of investigation is so well repressed that it remains inhib- 
ited from then on ; or the repression of sexual curiosity fails and 
returns from the unconscious, as neurotic compulsion to constant 
questioning, in which, now, the thinking and investigating itself 
assumes the pleasure which originally applied to the sexual aim ; 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW III 

finally, there is still possible, the ideal case, that the libido sub- 
limated to the desire for knowledge supports and stimulates the 
instinct for investigation, so that it is possible for the latter to 
work in the service of intellectual interests. 

We easily recognize that the type of analytic thinker stands 
nearest to the second possible outcome of the repression of infan- 
tile instinct for investigation, in that he, remaining in a purely 
intellectual field, invests the thought processes themselves, by 
means of a far-reaching introversion of libido, with pleasure, and 
forces upon reality the laws of his own thought, as happens in the 
subjective realism of Kant, 50 Schopenhauer, 51 and others, and 
further, in the phenomenalism ending in Solipsism. The egocen- 
tric attitude toward the outer world, reveals itself, as the result of 
a narcissistic overvaluation of the ego 52 and thought reality, which 
is projected into the outer world. 

Opposed to this, stands the type of positivistic investigator, 
who applies his sublimated need for knowledge and causality in 
suitable manner to objective reality and therewith, has, for the 
most part, renounced the pleasure principle. As is obvious, he 
represents the third of the cited potential results of infantile re- 
pression of instinct, and will afford the psychoanalytic investiga- 
tion in his personality and his work, the least material, since with 
him, libidinous instinctive forces, as in Nietzsche, functionate only 
as a thought creating motor. 

By far our greatest interest belongs to the first type of true 
metaphysical philosopher, who is most accessible psychoanalytic- 
ally, not only in his artistic personality, but often also betrays so 
plainly in the content of his work the phantastic wish material that 
the relationship of this kind of philosophizing to the invention of 
myths struck even Aristotle. Thus, while the two first types 

50 Kant : " Hitherto, one assumed that all our knowledge must direct 
itself toward objects; . . . One may therefore make the attempt once, 
whether we may not get along better in the problems of metaphysics by 
assuming that objects must direct themselves according to our knowledge." 

51 Schopenhauer : " The world is my idea." 

52 It is known that Fichte places most distinctly the ego and its con- 
sideration in the center of his philosophy and view of the world and 
derives everything else from that. The metaphysical distinction between 
pure and empirical ego does not come into the question for our psycho- 
logical consideration. 



112 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

possess preeminent characterological interest for us, since the 
unconscious instinctive impulses and libidinous energies serve only 
in the byway of character formation, as generator of thought and 
investigation, still, in the third type, the content of the system is 
plainly determined and influenced by the unconscious; to this 
fact, the few typical fundamental views and systems, ever recur- 
ring in the course of the development of philosophy, would have 
called our attention ; the many surprising similarities in structure 
and content between these philosophical systems and the miscar- 
ried system formations of certain sufferers from mental disease, 
psychoanalysis has disclosed. 

Though this kind of philosophizing is closely related to artistic 
endeavor, still, it is not to be overlooked, that both these types of 
mental productivity display a sharp differentiation, indeed, in 
certain respects, a psychoanalytically interesting contrast. Even 
outwardly, the artist is scarcely conceivable without a strong at- 
tachment and need for courting his contemporaries, while a strong 
introversion of his libido and an autistic thinking (Bleuler) char- 
acterize the philosopher. 53 The banal conception of the erotic 
freedom of the artist and of the sexual continence (chastity) of the 
philosopher, denotes this contrast even if grossly, still, not without 
significance. 54 The artist ever joins his universal human creatiorb 
to the individual case, the philosopher strives for generalizations ; 
the artist wishes to please and, therefore, uses suggestive means, 
the philosopher wishes to convince and therefore makes use of 
logical means. A distinction extending beyond the description, 
Schopenhauer has fixed in the statement : " One is not a poet with- 
out a certain bias for error and falsehood; on the other hand, not 
a philosopher, without a directly opposite propensity." The 
deeper differences may, in the ultimate analysis, be traced back to 
a difference of sexual constitution, that by the artist, an hyper- 
erotic, that by the philosopher, an anerotic, matured on variously 
emphasized partial instincts and the manifold fates of these, but 
especially in the philosopher, on a much farther forced diversion 
from sexual into mental, transcendental, unreal. 

53 Plato also calls thinking " sublimated sexual instinct." 

54 Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche emphasize the typical unmarried 
condition of the philosopher, which they themselves demonstrate in the 
examples of Cartesius, Leibniz, Malebranche, Spinoza, Kant and others. 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 113 

The unconscious expresses itself in corresponding manner in 
these system-formations as in the artistic productions. We dis- 
tinguish accordingly two forms of expression of the same in the 
philosopher which are characterized as metaphysical, since they 
seem to be founded on no objective knowledge: namely, the re- 
ligious and mythological system-formation. The former, of 
which there are various forms, postulates a creator, who may have 
produced the world from himself or from nothing (Heraclitus, 
Stoics, Neo-Platonists, Mystics). As in the formation of religion, 
psychoanalysis recognizes also in this, the universal unconscious 
projection of a father image, which has been powerful in infantile 
life, and can assert, that the feeling of omnipotence ruling the 
" thinker " here seems to pass over to the god- father by way of 
projection. In other systems, the whole world is animated in 
animistic manner and the dualism of the dead physical world and 
of the spirit permeating it, is contemplated under the picture of 
sexual reproduction; the rich elaboration of this sexual symbolism 
by individual mystics plainly betrays this system as projection of 
inner libido processes. In conscious recognition of this sexualiza- 
tion, not only of the thought functions, but also of the thought 
content, Ludwig Feuerbach once traced back the philosophical con- 
trasts and speculative discussion of the relation of subject and 
object, to the sexual relation of man and woman. 

The mystical system-formations are characterized by the as- 
sumption of a transcendental world, which, like the subjective 
idealism, can pass as depreciation, refusal, or destruction of pain- 
ful reality and as a flight to the infantile wish-situations projected 
from the unconscious. Here belongs also the belief in preexist- 
ence, transmigration of souls and return of the same, which, in 
ultimate analysis, proceeds like the corresponding religious dog- 
mas, from unconscious mother-womb and rebirth phantasies. 

These metaphysical ideas are, in their disregard of every test 
of reality, most readily accessible to psychoanalytic dissection, as 
phantasy products, and reveal themselves then, as phenomena of 
projection of the unconscious mental life into a supernatural world 
which naturally approaches the wishes of the individual in ques- 
tion, and those of many others in high degree, since psycholog- 
ically considered, it represents only a narcissistic self-reflection of 
the individual in the cosmos. This metaphysical projection forms 



I 14 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

in a way, the most primitive and most frequent form, in which 
the unconscious flows into system formation. The first step in 
the direction of knowledge of the unconscious is formed by the ra- 
tionalistic and mystical systems which, however opposed they may 
appear otherwise, still have in common that they expect to find the 
deepest nature of the world and the ultimate knowledge of things; 
in spite of this tendency, they cannot gain a direct insight into the 
field of the unconscious but conceive only in endopsychic percep- 
tion and represent in symbols. In this stage of knowledge, the 
unconscious meets us in the philosophical theories as something 
mystical, inconceivable and unrecognizable. In the course of fur- 
ther development, there has finally come about a sharp, definite 
conception of the unconscious, of which individual philosophers, 
as for example Hartmann, speak, even though in a different sense 
than psychoanalysis, while others have recognized and repre- 
sented it in its significance and operation, as Schopenhauer, in the 
theory of will, or Nietzsche, whose psychoanalytic derivation of 
the metaphysical and ethical needs from primitive instinctive im- 
pulses, needs only to be recalled here. 

In order to forestall misunderstandings, we will state expressly, 
although in this connection, the exclusive emphasis of psycho- 
analysis needs no apology, that, with these schematic remarks, we 
have neither exhausted the essence of philosophy, nor glanced 
over the history of its development, nor believe to have made 
entirely comprehensible the personality of the philosopher. All 
we could expect was to hastily indicate from what points the 
psychoanalytic method of consideration was in a position to ap- 
proach these problems. Searching detailed investigations will 
have to show how much such attempts may be able to contribute 
to the psychological comprehension of philosophy. 55 To a critical 
estimation of a system, they will naturally never extend, and do 
not pretend to ; they may only give definite hints and suggestions 
concerning the personal and subjective conditions of philosophical 
thought and views, whereby, however, the objective value of 
philosophical results must not be touched in the least. 

Similar viewpoints and limitations, as for our study of meta- 
physics, apply also to the psychoanalytic elucidation of ethics, as 

55 Compare the works of Dr. Phil. Alfr. Frh. v. Winterstein and Dr. 
Eduard Hitschmann in " Imago," II, 1913, Part 2, April. 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 115 

far as it is treated in the systems as a philosophical discipline. 
This comes about mostly from the claim that philosophy, on the 
ground of its insight into world phenomena and human life, is also 
first called upon to state ethical standards for the conduct of the 
individual in his relation to society. Here we have to overlook 
entirely this tendency, which goes back to the rationalistic con- 
ception of Socrates of the instruction of youth, and to consider 
psychologically the ethical theories of the individual philosophers 
primarily as the expression of individual needs and demands. 
Such a study teaches that the history of ethical development 
within philosophy represents a reflection of the repression of the 
gross, egoistic, violent and cruel impulses of man and that the 
struggle against these asocial impulses takes place in the field of 
ethics, as the struggle against the libidinous impulse's does in the 
domain of metaphysics. Thus, for the special elaboration of 
ethics, the fate of the predominating infantile instinctive impulses 
of cruelty and pleasure in mastery will be important, which de- 
pend on their mingling with libidinous components (sadism). 
The establishment of ethical standards comes about by repression 
of these impulses by means of reaction formation, from which 
formations result the demands of pity, human love and like 
esteem of fellow men. That opposing asocial impulses originally 
underlie these ethical postulates is plainly shown in the ethical 
revolutionaries appearing from time to time, who ridicule the 
coddling morality of pity, and prize as remedy the unscrupulous 
devotion to crass egoism, the will to power, like Stirner and Nie- 
tzsche. But even so profound a follower of ethics as Schopen- 
hauer cannot do enough in the detailed description of evil, cruel 
and jealous instinctive impulses; it is even reported by Spinoza 
that he, under pretense of scientific aims, tormented insects most 
cruelly; the most pretentious ethicist among the philosophers, 
Kant, began his philosophical career with an article " concei ning 
radical evil in human nature." 

Thus, the history of ethics shows the unceasing alternation 
between the pressure of the reaction-formations against the ego- 
istic instincts and the tendency to carry these through, regardless 
of everything; both kinds of attitude are conditioned by particular 
instinctive tendencies of the individual and the more or less suc- 
cessful repression of definite groups of instincts. A similar rela- 



Il6 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tion exists also in the demand, enunciated in many ethical sys- 
tems, for complete or partial renunciation of sexual intercourse 
and the numerous limitations of sexual pleasure (sexual ethics). 56 
Youth is thus nothing less than teachable, everyone is rather 
necessarily "ethical" so far as his repression suffices for the 
erection and maintenance of reaction formations, and the demands 
of individual philosophers can first have significance and applica- 
tion, only for themselves and a number of similarly endowed 
individuals. That, under such circumstances, the eminently im- 
portant problem of apparent freedom of the will, in the sense of a 
psychoanalytic view of the world, needs a revision, may be merely 
mentioned here. 

If we would attempt to gain from our viewpoint an insight 
into the genesis of ethics, we must proceed from the fact that its 
essence exists in the renunciation of a gratification in pleasure 
which the individual voluntarily imposes upon himself. That far, 
the old taboo prohibitions are the direct forerunners of the ethical 
standards. Of course, the motivation is quite different in the two 
cases. For, the limitations by the taboo go back, as far as a con- 
scious motive was formed for it, to an entirely egoistic basis, the 
anxiety before an evil threatening the transgressor. The un- 
conscious grounds, on the contrary, are the social considerations 
in those institutions, especially the primitive family, the existence 
of which would be threatened by the temptation which the taboo 
would forestall. The temptation itself became repressed and, at 
the same time, the correct motivation connected with it must have 
become inaccessible to consciousness. Since the welfare of the 
individual is closely united to that of the race, the social grounds 
go back again in great part to the egoistic. For the other part, 
however, libidinous desires participate, which invest the renuncia- 
tion in mental life with permanency, by rendering it pleasant, at 
least in indirect ways. Such motivations, proceeding from the 
libido, and mostly probably secondary, are for example, the 
experience of greater gain in pleasure by deferring the gratifi- 
cation or the love to a person whose claims and emotions may be 
spared by the renunciation. 

In contrast to this, in the ethical position, egoism may play 

56 Compare Christian v. Ehrenfels : " Sexualethik " (Grenzfragen, No. 
56, Wiesbaden, 1908). 



==" ? - T .e.i"- ;• • ri -i"*- " *• ' " ' ■ ■ 't •■ .-,■-,.. f r r .- ,. 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 117 

absolutely no further role as motive, except as anxiety before 
punishment. It is suppressed ; in the most extreme case of the 
" saint," it is even repressed from consciousness like the asocial 
wishes with the taboo. The social motivation, on the contrary, 
which, to-day, where the family no longer coincides with the 
state and humanity, has become colorless and unobjectionable, is 
now placed in the foreground and published as the only and suffi- 
cient one. Concerning the sources of this social duty, two chief 
opinions have been advanced in science, of which one represented 
by Rousseau seeks a voluntaristic determination in the "original 
goodness of human nature," while the other, intellectualistic, cen- 
ters in the categorical imperative of Kant. To the unconscious 
motivation of ethics, as reaction formation against repressed in- 
stincts, attention has already been called. The chief tendency of 
the taboo barrier was to make physically impossible, the for- 
bidden (action) by cutting off every opportunity, while the method 
of action of ethics consists in mental energies trying to draw the 
will to their side. 

Farthest removed from the sphere of direct influence of the 
unconscious seems to stand law, since it grants to gratification in 
pleasure the smallest place and represents most strictly the mate- 
rial and logical conformity to the end in view, thus, adaptation 
to reality. Law, in its pure form, renounces entirely the demands 
on the community of emotional interest, its formula is not the 
"you should" of ethics but the matter of fact "if you do this 
and do not do that, a definite injury will be done you by the 
community or a definite advantage withheld," wherein it leaves 
out of practical consideration for the individual to decide. In this, 
the statutes stand nearer to the taboo than does ethics, only the 
taboo threatens an indefinite evil from indefinite source. If this 
didn't happen, then probably the punishment was decreed by the 
community and thus the transition from taboo prohibition to law 
was effected. 

We leave entirely out of consideration the civil law, and 
would devote a short consideration only to the criminal law, 
which, because of its saturation with ethical and religious views, 
stands nearer to the unconscious mental life. This relationship 
makes its appearance also outwardly by the manifold symbolism 
with which legal decisions and execution of punishment were 



Il8 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

adorned among all peoples. 57 Even in our time, which puts 
aside the symbolism that is otherwise unsuitable for practical 
ends, a bit of this symbolic dress has remained in the criminal 
process. The significance of this symbolism has been happily 
investigated by J. Storfer 58 in a case of punishment of parricide 
in ancient Rome. He succeeded in showing that the symbolism 
has been the expression of the universal unconscious assumption, 
that the motive for the murder of a father (the basic case of 
parricide), is always the striving for the sole possession of the 
mother. Of such an hypothetical form of the participation of 
the unconscious in punishment, we may naturally speak, only in 
figurative sense. In truth, the case must be that every individual 
unconsciously transfers himself into the mental situation of the 
criminal, identifies himself with the latter. The crime, which 
the community punishes, was thus unconsciously committed by 
each of its members. The punishment gives the community 
welcome opportunity to do the otherwise forbidden cruelty under 
a social sanction. The predilection with which on such occa- 
sion the same was meted out to the criminal as he had done and 
the unconscious of the others had wished (jus talionis), is to be 
considered as final real execution of the wish awakened by the 
crime. 

The criminal who committed these acts which the others have 
already renounced thus represents a lower stage of control of 
instincts, viewed from the standpoint of present day culture, a 
phenomenon of regression to more primitive epochs. The an- 
thropological similarity between the criminal and the savage, 
emphasized by Lombroso, has a psychological parallel in the 
neurotic, who fails in the social order from failure of repression 
of instinct, though in different manner. 

(Criminal psychology has hitherto made little use of the in- 
sight of psychoanalysis. 59 One way, which allows the recog- 
nition of a connection with the unconscious, was indicated by 

57 Max Schlesinger, Die Geschichte des Symbols, Berlin, 1912, Book 
III, Chap. 2, as well as other literature there noted (page 267 ft.). 

5S J. Storfer, Zur Sonderstellung des Vatermordes, Vienna and Leip- 
sic, 1911. 

59 In this connection, compare Erich Wulffen, Der Sexualverbrecher, 
Berlin, 1909. 



PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, LAW 1 19 

the association experiment. The method chosen in that is the 
one elaborated by the Swiss school of psychoanalysis (Jung and 
others), in which it had been demonstrated that the feelings and 
experiences of the subject of the experiment could frequently 
be brought to light by his reactions to a series of selected stimu- 
lus words. Since for the criminal his act belongs to the strongly 
emotionally toned complexes, the attempt was made to deter- 
mine the condition of facts and convict the presumptive crim- 
inal. 60 

We have previously spoken of crime, as a phenomenon of 
regression, and must now also consider the question under what 
conditions a deed could be so estimated. Also in this regard, 
the previously mentioned work of Storfer affords valuable ex- 
planation. In this early stage of social development, in the 
epoch of patriarchies, murder of the father was synonymous 
with high treason ; since the primitive kind of expiation other- 
wise practiced, the blood revenge, was impossible in this case — 
not within the family because the son, by the success of his deed, 
would have become chief of his sex and not from family to 
family, because no injury to a strange fellow man was present — 
the endeavor to protect the life of the most important member 
of the community became the first occasion for the establishment 
of culpability for an act, from the viewpoint of public law. 
Therefore, murder of a father is to be considered as the arche- 
type of crime. 

In primitive relations, the motive of such a deed is to be 
sought in the economic rivalry between father and son. As a 
matter of fact, there exists among many people the institution 
of setting aside the father by the son who has attained power. 
Amidst the family property, the wife stands in first rank and the 
exclusive right of the father to all the women of the family has 
left behind its traces in the jus primse noctis of the patriarchal 
commonwealth. The parallels with what psychoanalysis has 
found in the unconscious mental life of the individual may thus 
be shown in the origin and development of the criminal law. 

60 C. G. Jung, Die psycholog. Diagnose des Tatbestandes, Juristisch- 
psychiatrische Grenzfragen, IV, 2, Marhold, Halle, 1906. 

A. Stohr, Psychologie der Aussage, Das Recht, Sammlung v. Abhand- 
lungen f. Juristen und Laien, Vol. IX/X, Berlin, 1912. 



CHAPTER VII 

Pedagogy and Characterology 

Psychoanalysis is not merely a science which represents an 
essential enrichment of our knowledge of human mental life; 

(rather, it was first elaborated as a practical method of treatment 
for influencing mental disturbances. 

The essence of the therapeutic technique consists in freeing 
the patient from the obsessional control of certain instinctive 
impulses, unbearable to his ego, but insufficiently repressed, 
which develop their preponderating effect from the unconscious, 
while the unsuitable process of repression automatically pro- 
ceeding from the pleasure-pain principle is annulled in the anal- 
ysis and replaced by the conscious control of these impulses, 
corresponding to the adaptation to reality. 

The means of this influencing are, according to the nature of 
the malady, less of an intellectual than of an affective kind, and 
are aided by the patient's desire for health, as well as his intel- 
lectual interest in the analysis. By the associations of the pa- 
tient, his dreams, symptomatic acts, mistakes, and other expres- 
sions, avenues to his unconscious are created and gradually broad- 
ened, during which, the intensity of the original repression meets 
the physician as resistance against the disclosure of the uncon- 
scious. The overcoming of this resistance is the chief task of 
the treatment. It succeeds only with the help of a dynamic 
factor, on the correct grasping of which, the possibility and out- 
come of the treatment depend. It is this, the influence of the 
physician, which becomes possible on the basis of a definite af- 
fective attitude of the patient which we call transference, be- 
cause it corresponds to a sum of affect of sympathy or antipathy 
transposed to the person of the physician, which had once been 
applied to important and authoritative persons of childhood 
(parents, relatives, nurses, teachers, priests). In the employ- 
ment of the , suggestive factor, psychoanalysis differs from all 
other psychotherapeutic methods in the fact that it remains con- 



PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 121 

tinually conscious of the peculiar nature of its activity and 
utilizes the pliant faith of the patient to accomplish lasting 
changes in his mental life, which guarantees him, after the 
necessary dissolution of the transference relation, his mental 
capability and independence. 

The effect of the psychoanalytic influence comes from two 
factors: the freeing of the repressed instinctive impulses from 
the false symptom-forming attitude and the new and suitable 
adaptation of these impulses to the real possibilities of gratifica- 
tion, that is, the directing into socially valuable paths of ac- 
tivity (sublimation), which arrangements had failed in an earlier 
stage of development. The psychoanalytic therapy is thus to 
be compared to a " late reeducation in the conquering of the rem- 
nants of childhood" (Freud) and as such has a claim on peda- 
gogic esteem. 

Of course, the therapy developed for adult and melancholy 
individuals is not suited without change to be transferred to 
direct application to the healthy growing child. The nature of 
the psychoanalytic task, and its solution, brought along with it 
the circumstance that, at first, it throws light only on what one 
might call the negative side of the educational problem, since it 
teaches us what influences are to be kept from the child in order 
to protect it from the later ruin in the neurosis, the downfall of 
all educational results. 

The foundation for the prosecution of the positive pedagogic 
task must be an understanding sexual education, particularly 
sexual enlightenment. This should not result from, as so often 
happens, gross seduction, brusque initiation or accidental over- 
hearing of sexual acts (especially of the parents). Rather, all 
these injurious influences are to be kept away, but on the other 
side, every forcing away from healthy sexual knowledge, espe- 
cially every kind of mysteriousness in sexual matters is to be 
avoided. So far as possible, one should leave the child alone, 
with as complete withholding of direct injurious influences as 
possible, and inhibit him as little as possible in his natural de- 
velopment. The child takes the sexual affairs of which he re- 
ceives knowledge from the processes of his own sharp sighted 
observation of the bits of nature around him at first like other 



IJ2 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

facts of experience and so must the adult learn to accept them, if 
he will be a helpful counselor to the child. A real explanation 
would first have to be given, as soon as the child himself, by 
spontaneous questions, betrays an intense interest in the meaning 
of sexual processes, which, because of his limited experience, 
can be only partially or not at all comprehensible. 

The growing boy, who is interested in the question Whence 
come Children? has a right, if not to complete at least to 
undistorted information, the withholding or falsification of 
which, may be severely avenged later. But further, an imme- 
diately fateful result may come about in the child, who, as a 
rule, is informed to some extent before the question is asked, if 
he feels himself lied to and deceived by his parents. Not seldom, 
he loses all reverence and trust for adults and becomes accessible 
with difficulty to influence from the educator. 

For, already in the child there arises that portentous trans- 
ference relation of libidinous impulses toward the persons of 
his nearest surroundings, which was recognized both in the 
psychoanalytic treatment and in the normal education, as the 
most important lever of suggestive influence. As the child 
stands in relation to the parents, especially the father, so will he 
arrange his attitude toward the respective persons later repre- 
senting this authority (teacher, priest, superior, chief, etc.) and, 
therefore, the most important condition of all later educational 
work remains the formation and preservation of good relations 
in the family, which, at present, unfortunately, are only the ex- 
ception and not the rule. On the other side, these relations 
should not become too intimate, since otherwise, the capability 
for transference, sublimation and separation of the parent libido, 
may be rendered difficult and even limited to neurotic fixation. 
The smooth separation from the authority of the parents and the 
personalities representing them, is one of the most important 
but also most difficult performances which is incumbent upon the 
child at the close of his educational work, if he is to attain mental 
and social independence. Here, pedagogy has much to learn 
from the transference relation and its gradual dissolution in the 
psychoanalytic treatment. 

Psychoanalysis allows, however, not only the exhibition and 



PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 1 23 

avoidance of errors of education hitherto committed but may 
also lead to the attainment of better results of a positive nature. 
The psychoanalytic study of the neuroses has illuminated, from 
the dynamic side, the problem of character formation and de- 
velopment which had previously remained in almost total dark- 
ness. Of course, it can say nothing concerning heredity in- 
fluencing the character of the man, which goes beyond the scanty 
and uncertain results of the theory of heredity, but knows ever 
so much more of the process of its growth, which is decisively 
determined by external and internal processes of the individual 
life. Character can be conceived as an especially clear mode of 
reaction of the individual, taking place in typical manner ; the 
analytic investigation has now shown that in its formation a far 
smaller share falls to the intellectual agencies than one had 
hitherto been inclined to believe. Rather, the character struc- 
ture rests on an economy of mental interplay of forces suitable 
for the individual, which sometimes demands a quite definite dis- 
tribution of masses of affect, a certain amount of gratification, 
suppression and sublimation of instinct. The remaining charac- 
ter traits of a man are either unchanged continuations of the 
original instinctive impulses, diversions of the same to higher 
aims, or reaction formations against the same. Thus can a 
child, perhaps originally cruel, who gratifies himself sadistically 
by tormenting animals, later become a butcher or ardent devotee 
of hunting and thereby continue the old satisfaction and gratifi- 
cation of instinct in little modified, though socially more useful 
manner ; he may, however, choose a profession which allows him 
this in the service of higher, more intellectual and more scien- 
tific interests and perhaps, as naturalist, carry on vivisection 
with especial interest or as surgeon perform valuable service to 
science and his fellow men ; in a third case, the all too powerful 
instinctive impulse may fall under intensive repression and seek 
gratification by way of reaction formation in humanitarian and 
ethical activities, which are opposed to the original instinctive 
aims, thus, the cruel sadistic child becomes in later life out- 
wardly sympathetic and devotes himself with special predilec- 
tion possibly to protection of animals. Finally, there are pos- 
sible by the strengthening of original instinctive tendencies dur- 



124 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ing the course of development and deficient formation of inhibi- 
tions, the antisocial outcomes in perversion (sadism) and crime 
(cut-throat), as on the other side, an overintense repression can 
lead to unfortunate outcome in the asocial neurosis (obsessional). 

Other attributes of character show less simple relations to 
the component instincts underlying them or the endeavors spring- 
ing from these; many are not simple in their origin, since indi- 
vidual components of instinct can undergo various fates; on the 
other hand, many partial instincts may have interacted for the 
ultimate formation of a character trait, strengthening, paralyz- 
ing, limiting one another. Still, psychoanalytic analysis of in- 
stinct has shown that our best virtues, many of our most valuable 
mental achievements and social institutions owe their origin to 
the transformation of instincts which were originally evil, low 
and asocial. 

Also for the child's later choice of a vocation and the so 
frequent fateful mistakes therein, the psychoanalytic method of 
consideration gives the educator certain points of vantage which 
are worthy of attention, even though often enough, in individual 
cases, external factors resisting influence inexorably demand 
their rights. In general, the individual will come nearest to the 
ideal of education, of being subjectively most happy and at the 
same time most efficiently fulfilling his profession in the service 
of society where he is permitted to utilize the infantile sources of 
instinctive activity in a sublimated and for society more useful 
form, like that in the above mentioned case of the surgeon. 

Besides the dynamic conception, a further piece of psycho- 
analytic comprehension of character formation rests on the in- 
sight, that just the component instincts of sexuality, which are 
unsuitable in normal social and love life, are earliest capable of 
such modifications and improvements, so that it is, therefore, the 
task of education to take the expressions of these asocial and 
" perverse " instincts in the child, not as occasion for their sharp- 
est violent suppression, but as indications of the proper time and 
place for a favorable influencing of the instinctive tendency. In 
particular, there are in early childhood, pleasurable sensation, con- 
nected with the excretory functions (anal and urethral eroticism) 
which undergo the most intensive repression with present-day 



PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEEOLOGY 125 

civilized people, and afford by reaction formations against these 
"animal" interests, essential contributions to the formation of 
character. The relation of man toward his animal functions (to 
which sexuality is also reckoned) and the kind of his mental 
reaction structures to these, are not only characteristic in gen- 
eral for individuals but seem also, to establish essential racial 
differences and inclinations. 

For the educator, there results from psychoanalytic experi- 
ence, the demand to keep more sharply in mind, besides the in- 
tellectual components of character formation, especially the af- 
fective agencies of transference, further the dynamic ones of 
the sexual instinctive share and its fate, and by consciously di- 
rected guidance, to make these useful. In this sense, psycho- 
analysis must first become an educational method for healthy 
adults, as it is already for adult patients, with whom the healthy 
have in common the bit of amnesia for the important processes 
of childhood, which renders difficult and prevents the under- 
standing of the mental life of the child. It will be the task of a 
psychoanalytic propaganda to educate the educator to self knowl- 
edge, to mutual freedom and candor, which are demanded for 
intimate dealing with children and for their favorable influencing. 

Throughout, psychoanalysis warns against imposing on the 
child too severe demands for repression, emphasizing rather, 
more careful consideration of the individual capabilities which, 
of course, should be raised to a certain common cultural level. 
In general, it cannot be so much the task of education to create 
new repressions in violent manner, as rather to observe care- 
fully, and support appropriately, in its appearance and progress, 
the tendencies to repression, which has already begun spon- 
taneously on the basis of internal processes and the general in- 
fluence of civilization ; in particular, to see that this repression is 
not demanded in exaggerated intensity, thus turning the instinct 
into false and injurious channels. Psychoanalysis recommends 
striving for control of instinct in place of suppression of instinct, 
the aiding by certain premiums of pleasure the child in the re- 
nunciation of momentary gratification in pleasure in favor of a 
later more valuable one adapted to the demands of reality; these 
premiums, however, should not consist in customary manner of 



126 SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

material things (playthings, candy, money, etc.) but in ideal 
values. The child is only to be educated by love, and under 
this condition, will feel sufficiently punished by the temporary 
withdrawal of this. Only for a beloved person does he gladly 
give up the undesirable activities and aims, and assumes in imi- 
tation, by way of identification with adults, what culture, in the 
shape of this beloved object of love, demands of him. 

Outside of the negative and positive hints and stimuli which 
pedagogy can gain and make use of, from the results of psycho- 
analytic investigation of the mental life of the adult, in the edu- 
cation of those who have failed, the practice of pedagogy offers 
frequent opportunity for bringing into direct application the 
psychoanalytic viewpoints and technical aids, where we have to 
deal with children and youths who are already in false paths, to 
influence favorably and to prevent further, perhaps serious in- 
juries, even before they have opportunity to encroach in devas- 
tating activity upon the social life. Excluded from pedagogic 
influence in this sense are feeble-minded, morally deficient or 
degenerate individuals, as well as outspoken neurotics, whose 
treatment should be left to the analytically trained physician. 
In spite of these limitations, there is open to the pedagogues and 
also, as the promising works of the Zurich pastor, Dr. Oskar 
Pfister show, to the spiritual adviser, a rich and fruitful field of 
work, which, as yet, lies as good as fallow. A mass of childish 
peculiarities, which are either not at all, or falsely understood, 
and are usually rendered worse by the bad pedagogical measures, 
reveal themselves to the educator trained in psychoanalysis, at 
first glance, as neurotic traits determined by the unconscious; 
the early recognition of these traits in the period of their ap- 
pearance in youthful age, can easily render them innocuous ; at 
the same time, the neurotically disposed individual is enabled 
by such attention to enter upon the struggle for the control of his 
instinctive life, better prepared. Everyone who has experienced, 
even in a few cases, the satisfaction of having childish faults, 
as meanness, stubborness, shyness, lying, stealing, fear of work, 
which faults had obstinately resisted every pedagogical influence, 
disappear as result of the psychoanalytical tracing back of these 
activities to neurotic attitude toward the parents, or false dis- 



PEDAGOGY AND CHARACTEROLOGY 1 27 

placement of instinct, indeed, often to see these vices give place 
to opposite virtues, must give expression to the conviction that 
psychoanalysis is destined to perform invaluable service to the 
science of education. But further, certain severe clinical symp- 
toms, as anxiety conditions of definite kind (fear of animals, 
pavor nocturnus, etc.), idiosyncrasies (against foods, persons, 
objects), eccentricities and mild nervous symptoms of physical 
nature (stuttering, nervous cough, clearing of the throat) prove 
by their neurotic character and the easily attainable influencing 
from circumstances under the control of the educator, to be ac- 
cessible objects for pedagogical psychoanalysis; at any rate, they 
are recognizable, in statu nascendi, to the analytically trained 
educator, and where it is necessary, can be referred early to 
medical treatment. 

In general, one may say that psychoanalysis, as it has already 
progressed far beyond its originally purely therapeutic signifi- 
cance to a science, indeed to a mental movement, also gains its 
pedagogic application beyond the field of individual prophylaxis 
in a social significance as a positive educational theory. And if 
also the psychoanalytic direction of investigation calls upon it to 
proceed, always of necessity, from the unconscious mental life, 
still, it is not to be overlooked that in ultimate end, psycho- 
analysis strives for the better control of this unconscious by 
constant widening of the conscious field of vision. Therewith 
of course, is imposed on man, who, with the beginning of civili- 
zation, had to learn to renounce the direct utilization of certain 
sources of pleasure, and with the gradual progress of culture, 
also the wish compensations of these, described in the fore- 
going chapters, a further denial, which is counterbalanced by the 
intellectual factor of pleasurably toned knowledge and conscious 
control of his own ego, as well as the outer world itself, up to a 
certain degree. In this renunciation of the pleasure principle 
in favor of adaptation to reality demanded of humanity, educa- 
tion is our most valuable means of assistance, since it can pre- 
pare the young and growing human child for this adaptation at 
the right time, show him suitable ways to substitute gratifica- 
tion, and thus make him adapted to the civilized life, while it 
avoids and prevents the flight into the old mental attitudes which 
have been abandoned as unsuitable. 



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